Been a while since I've been by here. Been busy. Sent a PM to Jeanene about the spam - hopefully she gets an email when she gets one of those..
The biggest thing going on with me at the moment: I'm being laid off at the end of August.
That means I'm trying to find another job and prepare for a move at the same time - because in my field (basic science research), there aren't huge numbers of them in any one place. Before I pack, though, I'm trying to get rid of as much crap as possible. I'm a hopeless packrat and there's nearly two decades' worth to go through, one individual piece of paper at a time.
I'm also looking into tech jobs instead of just marine science. To that end, I'm trying to get up a demo site of my leet skillz. So far it's just barebones basic, but most of the actual content is there. The biggest piece still to come is a SQL database I'm making of Robert's art. I've made two SQL databases for work, but they aren't viewable by the general public, so I asked Robert if I could do one of his art. He said yes, and (nearly) voila...
So, all in all: no fictional writing to speak of. I've even stopped roleplaying (though my games have been dead for quite a while now). No time. If I find a job, I'll need to be able to move quickly to it. If I don't find a job, I'll have all the time in the world to sit around sorting (at least until I run out of savings). Either way, I'm pressed for time.
[members-only cut]
Meanwhile, to entertain whoever is still here, a poem-like thing I found from 22 Aug 1991:
(moved to my Livejournal to retain original privacy)
Showing posts with label partial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label partial. Show all posts
2009/07/31
2008/09/01
Labor Day Novel 2008: Day Two
5672 words.
[members-only cut]
I now have a ton of different plot threads started:
1. Cassandra's plotline. She's the princess that has just come of age, doesn't at all want to be stuck with the normal fate of princesses, which is to get married off to a neighboring kingdom as an alliance exchange. Her father, the king, has noticed that she would make a better ruler than either of his sons, who are both morons. But she needs to do something to prove her worth to the Council, who are going to balk because she's a girl. So, little does she know that there's some sort of quest in her future, just as soon as I figure out the details...
2. Meanwhile, the city of Trincal is about to go to war against the druids. They've discovered a "secret weapon" in the form of an old, powerful, yet retarded vampire who is really spectacularly good at sucking the lifeforce out of everything. They have no idea what he is, other than "some sort of lifeforce sucking demon", and they've been carefully herding him in the direction of an underground passage that leads straight to Duuniain, the druid's main village. And they're planning to coordinate an attack at the same time as he arrives to there.
For his part, his mental capacity is basically on the level of "braaaaaaaiiinnnsss..." - and the lifeforce energy on druidic lands is extra delicious, and he really really wants to go there just as soon as he finds a way. He's been bumbling around in the Trincal sewers while the rest of the city coordinates.
Cassandra's quest is probably going to have something to do with all this.
3. Meanwhile again, Rumen is a powerful vampire, and he has been living among the druids for the past 16 years. Trincal doesn't know about him, and the druids don't know he's a vampire either (otherwise they would've evicted from the lands by now, as they hate vampires). He was just going about his business eating a random Trincal resident, when he overheard the battle plans. He's going to rush home to tell them, only to find that they've discovered he's a vampire, so they're going to lock him up until they figure out what to do with him. After all, even though he's a vampire, he's also been an honored guest for 16 years and has helped them out a bunch during that time.
Since vampires are telepathically aware of each other, he knows about the other one, doesn't like him, but doesn't have any idea that the other guy is the "secret weapon."
4. Jenya is a young girl whom Rumen adopted as an infant, 16 years ago. Her dying mother placed her in Rumen's care, not having any idea what he was. For some reason he actually honored her dying wish and brought the baby to her people, which are the druids. This whole story is also supposed to be about Jenya discovering that her "revered grandfather" is actually a vampire in disguise, and coming to terms with that. I haven't figured out how to introduce her yet.
That's the Beginning, anyway. My thoughts for the middle so far:
1. Trincal attacks Duuniain. They fail, because Rumen is in there to defeat their secret weapon.
2. Cassandra, who was involved in the attack, ends up stranded in druid lands. So does Gray, who has been charged with teaching her how to be leaderlike instead of merely ladylike. Gray was raised by the druids, so once he's cut off from the Crown and the oath that binds him to Trincal, he can start going unhinged about everything that's happened to him in his life.
3. Lots of high minded philosophical existentialist debates on what to do about Rumen. This will go on until the battle, at which point he proves that he's on their side, which then complicates the debates. Eventually, it's up to Jenya to decide his fate. I'm hoping she'll decide to let him go, preferably in peace. (Because if she decides that she hates him, he'll be sad. He'll still go - it's not like they can actually lock him up for real or kill him unless he lets them, which he won't.)
4. I haven't decided what part of Rumen's timeline this is. It could be right after his first rampage when he was mad at the world for having become a vampire. Or it could be the rampage after Alec got killed by a hunter, when he killed the hunter's entire family line. If I'm hoping to match all this up to the Sacramento story with Craig, it would have to be the latter. See, Craig comes into it as the one member of the hunter's family line that Rumen missed, who has been trying to hunt down Rumen ever since... On the other hand, the whole setup with Trincal could also make sense as when Rumen first met Alec in the first place.
5. I also have no idea whether the Trincal MCs are going to run into Rumen and Jenya, and what will happen if they do.
And now I'm going to head off and brainstorm up a proper intro for Jenya. Her story starts right at the point where she discovers he's not who she thought he was, and I need to set up the circumstances for that....
[members-only cut]
I now have a ton of different plot threads started:
1. Cassandra's plotline. She's the princess that has just come of age, doesn't at all want to be stuck with the normal fate of princesses, which is to get married off to a neighboring kingdom as an alliance exchange. Her father, the king, has noticed that she would make a better ruler than either of his sons, who are both morons. But she needs to do something to prove her worth to the Council, who are going to balk because she's a girl. So, little does she know that there's some sort of quest in her future, just as soon as I figure out the details...
2. Meanwhile, the city of Trincal is about to go to war against the druids. They've discovered a "secret weapon" in the form of an old, powerful, yet retarded vampire who is really spectacularly good at sucking the lifeforce out of everything. They have no idea what he is, other than "some sort of lifeforce sucking demon", and they've been carefully herding him in the direction of an underground passage that leads straight to Duuniain, the druid's main village. And they're planning to coordinate an attack at the same time as he arrives to there.
For his part, his mental capacity is basically on the level of "braaaaaaaiiinnnsss..." - and the lifeforce energy on druidic lands is extra delicious, and he really really wants to go there just as soon as he finds a way. He's been bumbling around in the Trincal sewers while the rest of the city coordinates.
Cassandra's quest is probably going to have something to do with all this.
3. Meanwhile again, Rumen is a powerful vampire, and he has been living among the druids for the past 16 years. Trincal doesn't know about him, and the druids don't know he's a vampire either (otherwise they would've evicted from the lands by now, as they hate vampires). He was just going about his business eating a random Trincal resident, when he overheard the battle plans. He's going to rush home to tell them, only to find that they've discovered he's a vampire, so they're going to lock him up until they figure out what to do with him. After all, even though he's a vampire, he's also been an honored guest for 16 years and has helped them out a bunch during that time.
Since vampires are telepathically aware of each other, he knows about the other one, doesn't like him, but doesn't have any idea that the other guy is the "secret weapon."
4. Jenya is a young girl whom Rumen adopted as an infant, 16 years ago. Her dying mother placed her in Rumen's care, not having any idea what he was. For some reason he actually honored her dying wish and brought the baby to her people, which are the druids. This whole story is also supposed to be about Jenya discovering that her "revered grandfather" is actually a vampire in disguise, and coming to terms with that. I haven't figured out how to introduce her yet.
That's the Beginning, anyway. My thoughts for the middle so far:
1. Trincal attacks Duuniain. They fail, because Rumen is in there to defeat their secret weapon.
2. Cassandra, who was involved in the attack, ends up stranded in druid lands. So does Gray, who has been charged with teaching her how to be leaderlike instead of merely ladylike. Gray was raised by the druids, so once he's cut off from the Crown and the oath that binds him to Trincal, he can start going unhinged about everything that's happened to him in his life.
3. Lots of high minded philosophical existentialist debates on what to do about Rumen. This will go on until the battle, at which point he proves that he's on their side, which then complicates the debates. Eventually, it's up to Jenya to decide his fate. I'm hoping she'll decide to let him go, preferably in peace. (Because if she decides that she hates him, he'll be sad. He'll still go - it's not like they can actually lock him up for real or kill him unless he lets them, which he won't.)
4. I haven't decided what part of Rumen's timeline this is. It could be right after his first rampage when he was mad at the world for having become a vampire. Or it could be the rampage after Alec got killed by a hunter, when he killed the hunter's entire family line. If I'm hoping to match all this up to the Sacramento story with Craig, it would have to be the latter. See, Craig comes into it as the one member of the hunter's family line that Rumen missed, who has been trying to hunt down Rumen ever since... On the other hand, the whole setup with Trincal could also make sense as when Rumen first met Alec in the first place.
5. I also have no idea whether the Trincal MCs are going to run into Rumen and Jenya, and what will happen if they do.
And now I'm going to head off and brainstorm up a proper intro for Jenya. Her story starts right at the point where she discovers he's not who she thought he was, and I need to set up the circumstances for that....
2007/11/11
Beginning of Day 11
The Nanowrimo site has its validation thingy up now, and it gives me almost a hundred more words than Jer's Novel Writer. For consistency I'm going to stick with the JNW counts, which means I have 20,715 words.
The highlight of tonight's writing was discovering the tragedy of Charles. He is very loyal to both Edward and their father, and even in last year's attempt this came through in the way he still hoped they would someday reconcile. Unfortunately, reconciliation is basically impossible, and he was forced to choose. He chose Edward but it killed him to do it.
More of the details are working themselves out as I go along; for example, Edward didn't escape from his father so much as get smuggled out by Charles. In some ways it's actually writing itself. This has never happened to me before. I think I like it. :)
[members-only cut]
Chapter 11 - This was the battle where Mario Romero was captured.
Chapter 12 - Edward takes Mario back to his father. Much to his great surprise, his father accepts him back into the family with no argument at all. It's because he's devised a ritual...
Chapter 13 - the ritual in question is performed. It's very painful and last a long time.
Chapter 14 - Edward convalesces from the ritual. They discover it didn't work. Father wants to do it again.
Chapter 15 - second attempt at the ritual. Charles decides he's had enough, he can't stand to see Edward destroyed by inches like this, and he chooses to hide Edward away from their father, thereby disowning himself. About 90% of the chapter was dialogue, where Charles wrestles with himself before reaching that decision.
Chapter 16 - And now it's a month or two later, they've moved to a peasant's cabin, and Edward is waking up for effectively the first time since the second ritual.
That's where I stopped. We'll see what happens next. ;)
The highlight of tonight's writing was discovering the tragedy of Charles. He is very loyal to both Edward and their father, and even in last year's attempt this came through in the way he still hoped they would someday reconcile. Unfortunately, reconciliation is basically impossible, and he was forced to choose. He chose Edward but it killed him to do it.
More of the details are working themselves out as I go along; for example, Edward didn't escape from his father so much as get smuggled out by Charles. In some ways it's actually writing itself. This has never happened to me before. I think I like it. :)
[members-only cut]
Chapter 11 - This was the battle where Mario Romero was captured.
Chapter 12 - Edward takes Mario back to his father. Much to his great surprise, his father accepts him back into the family with no argument at all. It's because he's devised a ritual...
Chapter 13 - the ritual in question is performed. It's very painful and last a long time.
Chapter 14 - Edward convalesces from the ritual. They discover it didn't work. Father wants to do it again.
Chapter 15 - second attempt at the ritual. Charles decides he's had enough, he can't stand to see Edward destroyed by inches like this, and he chooses to hide Edward away from their father, thereby disowning himself. About 90% of the chapter was dialogue, where Charles wrestles with himself before reaching that decision.
Chapter 16 - And now it's a month or two later, they've moved to a peasant's cabin, and Edward is waking up for effectively the first time since the second ritual.
That's where I stopped. We'll see what happens next. ;)
2007/11/08
Beginning of Day 8
So where last we left off, I had 12,863 words. I'm now at 13,368, and I did finish Chapter 10. My new short-term goal is to reach 20k by the end of Friday night's writing session. Then the weekend probably won't be terribly productive, because I'll have work and a local nano meet to distract me. Then we'll see how next week goes. I'm still considering a shot at 100k, same as I try every year, but that'll depend on how close I am to 50k by the 15th.
I might just put it all in one novel this time instead of splitting attention on two of them. That depends on whether I get stalled out on Edward anymore. So far it's going really well, and I have short-term plotting ideas in mind for at least a few more chapters, which will hopefully spawn more ideas by the time I reach the end of the current batch.
Things I'm doing differently this year: didn't start with any plans (though several months of back-of-the-mind rumination, plus running my semi-related game, certainly helped). Not letting anyone read any of it as I go along. Only one MC. Not sure which of those are what I'm doing right for a change. If I do manage to do Edward as a complete story of over 50k, and there's still time left, I might use the rest of the month to work on Emerald Sword. That story is actually related, oddly enough (albeit very much tangentially). It's its own complete story but has at least one character in common.
[members-only cut]
So. To continue the synopsis from before:
Chapter 7 - one week later, Edward is used to nightly feeding, but unfortunately hadn't figured out how not to kill his victims. Rumors of his disowning have reached the townspeople he's freeloading off of, and also there's news of a murderer on the loose. He did manage to collect the clothes he ordered from the tailor, though he had to talk his way out of going to jail.
Charles found him and they had a lovely chat before he left again, never to return. Charles told Edward he needed to find his new path and to do that he needed to go into the woods.
Chapter 8 - first day in the woods. He gets attacked by a pack of wolves, but his Inner Predator flares up, he discovers he can turn into a wolf himself, and he defeats them.
Chapter 9 - three months later, he's comfortably settled into being the leader of the wolf pack he'd defeated on the first day. It's winter now, he's discovering snow, and he encounters another Wilds Tainted named Gremlof. The two of them have a lovely chat discussing politics, and in the end Edward follows Gremlof to a Wilds moot.
Chapter 10 - the moot. They make plans to capture Edward's sire's boss and turn him in to Edward's father so that Edward's father will stop trying to kill them all on account of what happened to Edward.
And that's where we are now. The next thing I write will be the action-adventure segment of storming Mario Romero's HQ. Then the tentative plan is to send Edward in to deliver the guy to his father. Whereupon his father will capture Edward, because he's been spending his three months trying to work out a ritual to reverse Edward's tainting and turn him into an Abyssal after all.
Then we get a whole bunch of extended torture, because the ritual doesn't work as well as it was supposed to. Edward manages to escape eventually, in terrible shape. And now he has to hide from his father to avoid an unpleasant demise.
Which, aside from any sideplots that need resolving, basically brings us to the beginning of Amulet I proper. At that point, Edward is slowly dying unless he can somehow reverse the botched ritual. Meanwhile, the indigenous natives of Aunlania are in dire need of someone to teach their lone spirit shaman how to do an important ritual that none of them know. As you might guess, they're going to be doing a bit of a trade. But we'll see if I even get to that point of the proceedings...
I might just put it all in one novel this time instead of splitting attention on two of them. That depends on whether I get stalled out on Edward anymore. So far it's going really well, and I have short-term plotting ideas in mind for at least a few more chapters, which will hopefully spawn more ideas by the time I reach the end of the current batch.
Things I'm doing differently this year: didn't start with any plans (though several months of back-of-the-mind rumination, plus running my semi-related game, certainly helped). Not letting anyone read any of it as I go along. Only one MC. Not sure which of those are what I'm doing right for a change. If I do manage to do Edward as a complete story of over 50k, and there's still time left, I might use the rest of the month to work on Emerald Sword. That story is actually related, oddly enough (albeit very much tangentially). It's its own complete story but has at least one character in common.
[members-only cut]
So. To continue the synopsis from before:
Chapter 7 - one week later, Edward is used to nightly feeding, but unfortunately hadn't figured out how not to kill his victims. Rumors of his disowning have reached the townspeople he's freeloading off of, and also there's news of a murderer on the loose. He did manage to collect the clothes he ordered from the tailor, though he had to talk his way out of going to jail.
Charles found him and they had a lovely chat before he left again, never to return. Charles told Edward he needed to find his new path and to do that he needed to go into the woods.
Chapter 8 - first day in the woods. He gets attacked by a pack of wolves, but his Inner Predator flares up, he discovers he can turn into a wolf himself, and he defeats them.
Chapter 9 - three months later, he's comfortably settled into being the leader of the wolf pack he'd defeated on the first day. It's winter now, he's discovering snow, and he encounters another Wilds Tainted named Gremlof. The two of them have a lovely chat discussing politics, and in the end Edward follows Gremlof to a Wilds moot.
Chapter 10 - the moot. They make plans to capture Edward's sire's boss and turn him in to Edward's father so that Edward's father will stop trying to kill them all on account of what happened to Edward.
And that's where we are now. The next thing I write will be the action-adventure segment of storming Mario Romero's HQ. Then the tentative plan is to send Edward in to deliver the guy to his father. Whereupon his father will capture Edward, because he's been spending his three months trying to work out a ritual to reverse Edward's tainting and turn him into an Abyssal after all.
Then we get a whole bunch of extended torture, because the ritual doesn't work as well as it was supposed to. Edward manages to escape eventually, in terrible shape. And now he has to hide from his father to avoid an unpleasant demise.
Which, aside from any sideplots that need resolving, basically brings us to the beginning of Amulet I proper. At that point, Edward is slowly dying unless he can somehow reverse the botched ritual. Meanwhile, the indigenous natives of Aunlania are in dire need of someone to teach their lone spirit shaman how to do an important ritual that none of them know. As you might guess, they're going to be doing a bit of a trade. But we'll see if I even get to that point of the proceedings...
2007/02/15
Week 5 of Zette's Class as applied to Fortress Launne
So, it's actually nearing the end of Week 6, but I've been busy doing roleplay-related things for the past week and a half, and now I'm a bit behind in the class. Week 5 turns out to be a lot more time- and thought-intensive than the previous four weeks. Also, when I read the eight questions we're supposed to answer about our setting, I immediately start thinking about Fortress Launne instead of my 2YN story. This is good, because I desperately need to make sense of my Fortress Launne setting. It's a bit of a mess right now. I'm looking forward to the worldbuilding sections of the class for that reason.
On the other hand, it stalls me out for the 2YN story because I can't answer the questions until after I've already answered them for Fortress Launne. I therefore need to do this time- and thought-intensive assignment twice. Hence I haven't done anything yet.
In roleplaying news, my game is the only one that's moving. I got slammed with applicants last week, but things have quieted down this week. All the games I play are dead.
I've also started a game on RPoL for alcar's roundrobin story idea. The basic premise is:
Come one, come all. ;) I've got one story already started, plus a couple tandem stories to pass the time while people are taking turns writing. If more people sign up I can coordinate another one.
[members-only cut]
Anyway, so here's my attempt to answer the Week 5 questions for Fortress Launne...
1. Culture as personality - What basic overall influence has gone into creating your setting? How is this influence reflected in the setting, in both physical appearance and general atmosphere?
For Amulet I, there are two distinct cultures. The native folk are hardened survivors living in swamplands after having been driven nearly to extinction. They're a very resourceful people and have a culture that was originally matriarchal but now reflects equality among everyone. There are no officially designated gender roles; each person has their own set of talents and skills that can help the community, and what gender they are is not as important. There are female warriors and male babysitters. All of the tribal leaders are still female, however.
The other culture is sort of a medieval European culture, male dominated with highly-defined ideas of gender roles, roles by birth (nobility vs. servants/peasants), etc. Everyone has a place, and stepping out of bounds of their places is severely disapproved. Needless to say, the native folk find this way of doing things a bit distressing.
2. Scars - Signs of previous troubles in the setting. What are the scars on your setting, and what caused them? How do your people react to them?
The native folk are highly suspicious of anyone outside of their lands. Non-natives are called "outlanders." It doesn't help that previous overtures of peace have turned into betrayal and bloodshed. They tend to overreact at any sign that they're about to be betrayed again.
The biggest physical scar would be the fort in the valley. This was where the first outlanders set up to extirpate the native folk. The fort has been flattened twice before in the past several decades, then rebuilt in the same place. By the end of Amulet I it'll probably be flattened again.
3. Status - Is your setting the location of rich and powerful people, a quiet village with everyone working together, or an impoverished town where everyone is scrambling to survive?
It's a frontierland to the European-style culture. The fort and surrounding farms is a small population that is always on guard for hostility from the native folk. The outlanders would really like to colonize the rest of the native folk lands.
The native folk live in primitive-looking villages of round wooden huts on stilts, adapted to constant flooding. They mostly get their food from fishing and hunting/gathering, and a tiny bit of gardening.
4. Population - What is the general population of the setting for your story? Consider this not just as a number function, but also a relative function as well. One hundred people on a small ship can be far more trouble to maintain than 1,000 people in a small village.
The fort population is small, somewhere in the low hundreds. However, they are not far from a larger population center to the south. The city of Myan is just across a wide river.
The native folk, meanwhile, are the last of their kind. There are less than a thousand of them in the Amulet I part of the timeline. There are more of them somewhere "off to the west" because most of them were captured and relocated to wastelands several decades ago, but they aren't in contact with each other.
Population is one of the things that keeps changing on me; I'd originally figured that there are only 300 or so native folk, but it keeps getting bumped upward because I'm not sure they can have as much power as I need them to have with only 300.
5. Weaknesses - What are the weaknesses within your setting and how did they come about? Are the people aware of the weaknesses, blind to them, or worried about them?
Based on the way Zette describes it, she's asking about signs of decay. I'm not sure there's been enough time for permanence to either setting at the time of Amulet I for anything to have decayed. There are certainly signs of past battles, especially at the fort, but those were total destruction events. Later on, when Fortress Launne is an actual city, there will be more of these. 80 years later, the native folk are dwindling by slow atrophy of their ways rather than outright battle.
6. Relationships - What are the relationships within and outside the setting which help to define it?
Hmmm. These questions are starting to get a bit repetitive.
Between settings, I've already covered in Question 1-2.
Within each setting... the native folk are mainly cooperative with each other, as their survival is still threatened from outside forces. There are a series of small villages of 30-50 people each, set up that way to make it easier to find resources and stay hidden, and they communicate closely with one another. The setting as a whole hasn't been in place for more than a couple generations since the last major attempt at annihilation from the outlanders.
The fort population is fairly cooperative as well. Their survival is threatened by native hostilities, and they rely on a centralized government system to guard everyone. It has really only been an organized town for about a decade.
7. Weather - What is the general weather pattern for your setting? What extremes might affect your story?
Well, basically it's southern Florida except with mountains. A subtropical setting, lots of swamplands. There are occasional hurricanes. On a daily basis it's fairly sunny most of the time with scattered rainshowers that last less than an hour each.
8. Emotions - What is the emotional impact the background has on your setting and scene?
Mutual distrust between the two settings. A reasonable sense of trust and cooperation within each setting. Also, the native folk work in harmony with nature, while the outlanders would like to tame it.
Hmmm. In retrospect, this wasn't as hard as I was thinking. Apparently I do have the bare basics pinned down fairly well. It's the details that keep tripping me up.
On the other hand, it stalls me out for the 2YN story because I can't answer the questions until after I've already answered them for Fortress Launne. I therefore need to do this time- and thought-intensive assignment twice. Hence I haven't done anything yet.
In roleplaying news, my game is the only one that's moving. I got slammed with applicants last week, but things have quieted down this week. All the games I play are dead.
I've also started a game on RPoL for alcar's roundrobin story idea. The basic premise is:
Writer A writes Chapter 1, aiming for somewhere around 500-1000 words. Writer A passes their last 10 lines (up to 200 words) to Writer B.
Writer B writes Chapter 2 based on what Writer A passed along, and passes the last 10 lines of Chapter 2 to Writer C ...
This goes on until each participant has written three chapters. When the last writer has finished the last chapter, the entire story is assembled and read for the first time. Hilarity ensues. :)
Come one, come all. ;) I've got one story already started, plus a couple tandem stories to pass the time while people are taking turns writing. If more people sign up I can coordinate another one.
[members-only cut]
Anyway, so here's my attempt to answer the Week 5 questions for Fortress Launne...
1. Culture as personality - What basic overall influence has gone into creating your setting? How is this influence reflected in the setting, in both physical appearance and general atmosphere?
For Amulet I, there are two distinct cultures. The native folk are hardened survivors living in swamplands after having been driven nearly to extinction. They're a very resourceful people and have a culture that was originally matriarchal but now reflects equality among everyone. There are no officially designated gender roles; each person has their own set of talents and skills that can help the community, and what gender they are is not as important. There are female warriors and male babysitters. All of the tribal leaders are still female, however.
The other culture is sort of a medieval European culture, male dominated with highly-defined ideas of gender roles, roles by birth (nobility vs. servants/peasants), etc. Everyone has a place, and stepping out of bounds of their places is severely disapproved. Needless to say, the native folk find this way of doing things a bit distressing.
2. Scars - Signs of previous troubles in the setting. What are the scars on your setting, and what caused them? How do your people react to them?
The native folk are highly suspicious of anyone outside of their lands. Non-natives are called "outlanders." It doesn't help that previous overtures of peace have turned into betrayal and bloodshed. They tend to overreact at any sign that they're about to be betrayed again.
The biggest physical scar would be the fort in the valley. This was where the first outlanders set up to extirpate the native folk. The fort has been flattened twice before in the past several decades, then rebuilt in the same place. By the end of Amulet I it'll probably be flattened again.
3. Status - Is your setting the location of rich and powerful people, a quiet village with everyone working together, or an impoverished town where everyone is scrambling to survive?
It's a frontierland to the European-style culture. The fort and surrounding farms is a small population that is always on guard for hostility from the native folk. The outlanders would really like to colonize the rest of the native folk lands.
The native folk live in primitive-looking villages of round wooden huts on stilts, adapted to constant flooding. They mostly get their food from fishing and hunting/gathering, and a tiny bit of gardening.
4. Population - What is the general population of the setting for your story? Consider this not just as a number function, but also a relative function as well. One hundred people on a small ship can be far more trouble to maintain than 1,000 people in a small village.
The fort population is small, somewhere in the low hundreds. However, they are not far from a larger population center to the south. The city of Myan is just across a wide river.
The native folk, meanwhile, are the last of their kind. There are less than a thousand of them in the Amulet I part of the timeline. There are more of them somewhere "off to the west" because most of them were captured and relocated to wastelands several decades ago, but they aren't in contact with each other.
Population is one of the things that keeps changing on me; I'd originally figured that there are only 300 or so native folk, but it keeps getting bumped upward because I'm not sure they can have as much power as I need them to have with only 300.
5. Weaknesses - What are the weaknesses within your setting and how did they come about? Are the people aware of the weaknesses, blind to them, or worried about them?
Based on the way Zette describes it, she's asking about signs of decay. I'm not sure there's been enough time for permanence to either setting at the time of Amulet I for anything to have decayed. There are certainly signs of past battles, especially at the fort, but those were total destruction events. Later on, when Fortress Launne is an actual city, there will be more of these. 80 years later, the native folk are dwindling by slow atrophy of their ways rather than outright battle.
6. Relationships - What are the relationships within and outside the setting which help to define it?
Hmmm. These questions are starting to get a bit repetitive.
Between settings, I've already covered in Question 1-2.
Within each setting... the native folk are mainly cooperative with each other, as their survival is still threatened from outside forces. There are a series of small villages of 30-50 people each, set up that way to make it easier to find resources and stay hidden, and they communicate closely with one another. The setting as a whole hasn't been in place for more than a couple generations since the last major attempt at annihilation from the outlanders.
The fort population is fairly cooperative as well. Their survival is threatened by native hostilities, and they rely on a centralized government system to guard everyone. It has really only been an organized town for about a decade.
7. Weather - What is the general weather pattern for your setting? What extremes might affect your story?
Well, basically it's southern Florida except with mountains. A subtropical setting, lots of swamplands. There are occasional hurricanes. On a daily basis it's fairly sunny most of the time with scattered rainshowers that last less than an hour each.
8. Emotions - What is the emotional impact the background has on your setting and scene?
Mutual distrust between the two settings. A reasonable sense of trust and cooperation within each setting. Also, the native folk work in harmony with nature, while the outlanders would like to tame it.
Hmmm. In retrospect, this wasn't as hard as I was thinking. Apparently I do have the bare basics pinned down fairly well. It's the details that keep tripping me up.
2007/01/11
Beginning of the New Year: State of the Union (or at least my Writing Life)
Well, Zette's class is off to a rousing good start. So far, for the first week's assignment, we just needed to post up 50-100 words describing an idea. Here's mine:
Obviously I decided against the plot I mentioned in my last entry (though I might use it for something else later on). The above idea came to me last summer, while we had two visiting scientists on campus, one from Japan and one from Norway. They were both here for several months and they'd brought their families. They each had sons that spent a lot of time playing together.
I came up with the idea, didn't really know where to go with it from there, and filed it away. It occurred to me that Zette's class would be a perfect place to try to develop it, since I'm not doing anything much with it anyhow, and it's very different from everything else I'm doing.
Meanwhile, I wrote 992 words last night toward Amulet I. Since Nanowrimo ended I've managed to come up with around 4500 new words, mostly in fits and starts as the mood moves me. The good news is that the mood moves me rather more often than for either of my previous Nanowrimo novels. I've barely looked at Amulet II since Nanowrimo 2005 ended, and I'm holding off on any more fiddling with Temple (as well as Janis) until after Amulet I is done, and the setting ... umm, settles. Right now it's about as solid and stable as quicksand. Every time a character sneezes, it turns out I need to do more worldbuilding and change things around. (Note: no characters have ever actually sneezed in any of my efforts thus far. Hmm. Maybe someone should.)
As for Stranger on a Bus, it's still languishing on the backburner. I've decided that the next scene will involve a blizzard, however. So far I've managed to go ten chapters without any whiteout driving conditions; I need to "fix" that.
[members-only cut]
Then there's Dragonfly. I needed to get far enough away from it before I could figure out what it meant. Eight months later, here I am.
The main problem I struggled with is that, looking just at the framework of the actual story, what I have is a choice between death and death. So the question was: what's the difference?
That's not what the story is about though. What we have is a man that is bored (and boring), because from his view, he's sitting there waiting while nothing much happens. Ultimately his existence is meaningless. As far as he can tell, nothing much will ever happen, there will never be anything but the waiting, and eventually at some point it will end.
Then a dragonfly comes and shows him that there is a different way. That there is a place with meaning, and it's over a line that he didn't know about before.
Once he knew it was there, he had to make the decision to cross it. He knows that there's a lot to explore on the other side, and elephants to find, but he can't see them without crossing the line - he has to trust that they are there. It's a leap of faith that he has to take.
So it's not a choice between death and death. It's about either staying still and dying where he is, or crossing over and transcending into new life.
This is a metaphor that I've been discussing with my brother for a long time now. Life is like a holodeck. Everything is illusory on the inside, which means that everything is ultimately meaningless. But there's an outside to the holodeck. It's a scary place, and you can't know what's out there unless you actually leave. There's only so much information you can gather about the outside from the inside, and at some point there's nothing left to do but to actually go there and see.
My brother is still stuck in that holodeck. I took a leap of faith and crossed over. My dragonfly was a young girl named Dana who came along in 2002 and dragged me out of an abyss. The line appeared while we roleplayed. And now I know what's on the outside, but I can't show him. He demands proof that there's meaning and wondrous elephants. But he has to come over on his own.
How to convey all that in Dragonfly though. I could take the easy way out and make that playground more significant instead. Give the man a choice - get well and be able to go out to the playground with the laughing children, or die and be able to explore the other side of the line and find the elephants.
Hmm. I guess I'm still not really sure what the elephants mean. Memory would be the obvious thing. But memory of what?
Also, why a dragonfly? I think I know the answer to that one, though whether it's relevant to the story remains to be seen. My grandfather was born in a dragon year (Chinese zodiac). In early 2004 we all had to fly out to see him because he'd collapsed and everyone figured he was about to die. He was on a respirator when I got there; he'd survived tuberculosis several decades earlier, but it permanently damaged his lungs. When I went to hold his hand, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. After that he made a miraculous recovery, and not long after I left, he was able to go home. There's a bit more to that than I'm saying, but I think that's where the dragonfly came from.
I guess my grandfather, being a grandfather, would have a lot of memories. Hmmm.
So that's where I am with that.
Two young boys from different nations played together as children when their families met while stationed in a third nation. Fifty years later, their nations are at war with each other, and they meet again as emissaries for peace. Can they draw on their shared childhood to find common ground?
Obviously I decided against the plot I mentioned in my last entry (though I might use it for something else later on). The above idea came to me last summer, while we had two visiting scientists on campus, one from Japan and one from Norway. They were both here for several months and they'd brought their families. They each had sons that spent a lot of time playing together.
I came up with the idea, didn't really know where to go with it from there, and filed it away. It occurred to me that Zette's class would be a perfect place to try to develop it, since I'm not doing anything much with it anyhow, and it's very different from everything else I'm doing.
Meanwhile, I wrote 992 words last night toward Amulet I. Since Nanowrimo ended I've managed to come up with around 4500 new words, mostly in fits and starts as the mood moves me. The good news is that the mood moves me rather more often than for either of my previous Nanowrimo novels. I've barely looked at Amulet II since Nanowrimo 2005 ended, and I'm holding off on any more fiddling with Temple (as well as Janis) until after Amulet I is done, and the setting ... umm, settles. Right now it's about as solid and stable as quicksand. Every time a character sneezes, it turns out I need to do more worldbuilding and change things around. (Note: no characters have ever actually sneezed in any of my efforts thus far. Hmm. Maybe someone should.)
As for Stranger on a Bus, it's still languishing on the backburner. I've decided that the next scene will involve a blizzard, however. So far I've managed to go ten chapters without any whiteout driving conditions; I need to "fix" that.
[members-only cut]
Then there's Dragonfly. I needed to get far enough away from it before I could figure out what it meant. Eight months later, here I am.
The main problem I struggled with is that, looking just at the framework of the actual story, what I have is a choice between death and death. So the question was: what's the difference?
That's not what the story is about though. What we have is a man that is bored (and boring), because from his view, he's sitting there waiting while nothing much happens. Ultimately his existence is meaningless. As far as he can tell, nothing much will ever happen, there will never be anything but the waiting, and eventually at some point it will end.
Then a dragonfly comes and shows him that there is a different way. That there is a place with meaning, and it's over a line that he didn't know about before.
Once he knew it was there, he had to make the decision to cross it. He knows that there's a lot to explore on the other side, and elephants to find, but he can't see them without crossing the line - he has to trust that they are there. It's a leap of faith that he has to take.
So it's not a choice between death and death. It's about either staying still and dying where he is, or crossing over and transcending into new life.
This is a metaphor that I've been discussing with my brother for a long time now. Life is like a holodeck. Everything is illusory on the inside, which means that everything is ultimately meaningless. But there's an outside to the holodeck. It's a scary place, and you can't know what's out there unless you actually leave. There's only so much information you can gather about the outside from the inside, and at some point there's nothing left to do but to actually go there and see.
My brother is still stuck in that holodeck. I took a leap of faith and crossed over. My dragonfly was a young girl named Dana who came along in 2002 and dragged me out of an abyss. The line appeared while we roleplayed. And now I know what's on the outside, but I can't show him. He demands proof that there's meaning and wondrous elephants. But he has to come over on his own.
How to convey all that in Dragonfly though. I could take the easy way out and make that playground more significant instead. Give the man a choice - get well and be able to go out to the playground with the laughing children, or die and be able to explore the other side of the line and find the elephants.
Hmm. I guess I'm still not really sure what the elephants mean. Memory would be the obvious thing. But memory of what?
Also, why a dragonfly? I think I know the answer to that one, though whether it's relevant to the story remains to be seen. My grandfather was born in a dragon year (Chinese zodiac). In early 2004 we all had to fly out to see him because he'd collapsed and everyone figured he was about to die. He was on a respirator when I got there; he'd survived tuberculosis several decades earlier, but it permanently damaged his lungs. When I went to hold his hand, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. After that he made a miraculous recovery, and not long after I left, he was able to go home. There's a bit more to that than I'm saying, but I think that's where the dragonfly came from.
I guess my grandfather, being a grandfather, would have a lot of memories. Hmmm.
So that's where I am with that.
2006/12/09
More Worldbuilding Rumination
I haven't written anything since Nanowrimo ended. Real Life sort of came flooding back in to inundate me, and although this has been bad for writing time, I've noticed that a month-long break has renewed my energy for getting work done. Especially work at work. I was getting pretty burnt out and feeling like I was in a rut, and spending way too much time doing personal stuff and web-browsing than working, and not feeling sufficiently guilty about it; now I'm attacking my to-do list with renewed vigor.
Meanwhile, I've gotten back into the swing of things for roleplaying. Not that it's needed. It turns out that most of my players aren't around much anymore, and although nobody has actually left the game, it's not looking like it'll revive anytime soon. Which is fine. Christmas break is coming up to throw a wrench into things anyway, so I'll worry in January.
A lot of my non-work time has been spent beta testing the next version of the roleplaying website. The admin guy is going full steam ahead trying to finish it up so he can release it, but there's still lots of bugs to find and fix. Beta testing is always interesting and fun to me, when I have time for it. Stumbling across bugs isn't so hard on its own. But writing down the steps taken to reproduce it takes some time and effort. Writing up bug reports takes as much skill as any other kind of writing, really - there's a need to be concise, precise, and clear. Also, a lot of policy issues seem to come up, when trying to decide how best to implement things. Those generate a lot of interesting discussions.
Meanwhile, to stop blathering meaninglessly and actually get to the original point of this entry...
So, 75k words later, I've managed to pinpoint a whole lot more holes in my setting. Now I'm working on filling them by doing a lot of thinking instead of writing. Once I figure everything out, I'll continue.
[members-only cut]
So, holes. Namely:
1. What exactly do I mean, everything in reality exists in layers?
2. What exactly is the spirit world, and how do the shamans get to it?
3. What's a shaman again? How are they different from regular people?
4. What are spirits? Which things have them? Where do they come from?
5. How is the dream realm related to the spirit realm? And where are they in relation to the physical realm?
6. If Charles is partly fae as he claims, what exactly is fae? Why can't he do what Aliacorba does?
7. What's the Great Cycle? How's it relate to the Great Mother? Where does this leave the Tainted?
8. What kinds of energy are there and how are they related to each other? Physical I know, but emotional? Life? Tainted? psychic? Other?
9. Do souls exist? If so, what are they in relation to everything else?
10. Amulets? Huh?
So basically, my setting has always been extremely flimsy. ;) Getting less so in the past week, though.
I saw a short cartoon film back in high school, called (I think) Flatlanders [from 1982]. Basically it was about a family of 2D objects living on a plane. One day, the protagonist (I can't remember what he was - a circle, a square, a triangle maybe...) meets a 3D object. Only, because the 2D object can only see in 2D, the 3D object looked like a circle. Furthermore, the circle just sort of magically appeared in the protagonist's house, and had a magical power of being able to make himself grow and shrink in size.
It wasn't a circle though. It was a sphere, intersecting the plane. And the sphere pulled the protagonist off of his plane and took him on a merry jaunt through a 3D world, then returned him safely back to his house where he spent the rest of his life trying to tell other people about all the wonders he saw, except they didn't believe him and thought he was mad.
So ... that's sort of the nutshell summary of the layers of reality in Fortress Launne. Each layer is like a different plane. The Vinithi shamans can see the ones nearest to the physical plane (a "realm") in addition to the physical plane, and they can also reach these other realms by walking to them. When they do, they disappear off the physical realm. Like a sphere going all the way through a 2D plane until it no longer intersects.
In Amulet I I've so far mentioned "dream realm" and "spirit realm" and "abyss." The shamans mostly walk to the spirit realm. I've decided that they can't reach the dream realm - not because they can't see it, and attempt to walk there, but because the environment is not conducive to life. Sort of like you could send a human to the moon without benefit of, say, a rocketship around them. However, the chances that they'll survive the trip are nonexistent, and even if they did somehow survive, they wouldn't last long on the moon, either.
So it is with the dream realm, which can only be reached by ... umm, dreaming. Shamans have to get there the same way as everyone else, and can't take their bodies with them.
Then there's spirits. Everything on the physical realm has one. There are also others that didn't originate on the physical realm, but can manifest there if they really want to.
Some of those become fae. And some of those fae blend with living creatures to form ... uh, whatever Charles' mother was. And then somehow got passed on to Charles. Who can't actually do any of the things that the Vinithi shamans can, because he's sort of the opposite thing - a spirit that originated from Somewhere Else and manifested permanently in the physical realm. While the shamans originate in the physical realm and can walk elsewhere. (Sort of. This one still needs work...)
There are more spirit realms than just the ones that the shamans can reach. For example, the spirit wolf pack of Temple are not on the same realm, though I need to go back and figure out exactly what the differences are at some later point.
There can be more dimensions beyond the 3D analog too. Souls, I've decided, when the bodies they're attached to die, leave the 3D analog as well and go off in some 4D direction, where not even the shamans can follow. Souls are sort of a type of spirit.
Then there's the whole thing with the Great Cycle. Which mostly refers to the great cycle of life and living in particular. Life energy, therefore, is generated by the Great Cycle. The Tainted, meanwhile, have stepped outside of the cycle; Tainted energy is the energy of death, and it comes from ... elsewhere. Some place dark and unspeakable, and possibly what will eventually spark any horror I try to do with this setting in the future.
There's also been the dynamic of light vs. shadow. The realm of the abyss is where shadows come from, and it's a place where darkness isn't just an absence of light, and shadows can be entities in their own rights.
My model for the Great Cycle has mostly been shaped by my lava lamp, I think. It has a very predictable cycle of what the lava does, from the time I turn the thing on, until the blob of lava no longer rises and just sits on the bottom.
I've named the stages. There's gestation, which is when the light is on but everything is still cold. There's birth, when the first tentacle of lava shoots out from the bottom, gets most of the way to the top, and instantly hardens. Infancy is the period after that, when nothing much happens while lava continues to heat up. Sometimes more spikes of lava shoot up and instantly harden, or the bottom disk tilts and causes the solid tubes to break and fall down. Childhood is when there are many small lava bubbles going up and down, while most of it is still solid or semisolid, and there's hills and peaks and up to three individual geysers putting up bubbles at the same time. Bubbles start getting gradually larger.
Adolescence begins when all of the lava at the bottom suddenly rises up together and goes up to the top of the lamp in a single column. Adolescence is the period of one single undulating central column, where sometimes it looks like it might break into a stalactite and stalagmite, but mostly doesn't.
Finally the thing reaches maturity. The column breaks up into blobs of lavas of all shapes and sizes. This then continues for a long time. Lava spends a lot more time at the top than bottom overall. At first everything moves up and down fairly quickly, but it gradually slows down after a while.
At senescence, the blobs have slowed down so they look like they're having trouble coming up with the energy to rise again, after falling to the bottom. They tend to have a distinct shape to them too, sort of like a 3D comma or an upside down teardrop where the end is sort of curved inward. Sometimes it will form a senescence column, which looks a lot like the adolescence column, though it doesn't last as long. Sometimes a column will seem to revive the lamp a bit, allowing for more time of "maturity" like activity.
Eventually, though, all the lava falls to the bottom and becomes one or two big blobs. Sometimes they'll continue trying to rise, in that they'll get up far enough to break contact with the bottom. But they only go up halfway if they're lucky before they start falling. Finally they just sit at the bottom, and their 'heads' continue to sink lower and lower. At that point, the show is over. I turn the lamp off.
Ummm. Anyway. To get back to the worldbuilding... so the Great Cycle is just like that, where each individual life of a creature is like a small blob of lava, going up and down in the lamp, over and over in many reincarnations. Eventually the cycle will run down, which will possibly generate all sorts of interesting horror stories later on down the line when my original Fortress Launne material has run out. That's not going to happen for a while, though.
I was also going to talk about energy. Physical energy is obvious - it's exactly the same kind people are familiar with, with lightning being the example in nature that comes to mind. Then there's life energy. Life generates it and radiates it as a part of the business of living. Tainted Ones feed off of this to stay animated, though they also transform it into something called Tainted energy, which they can use to do a number of things that living things can't. The original Tainting happened from ... "elsewhere." Outside of the Great Cycle. Something that is a symptom of the fact that things are running down, I think.
Then there's emotional energy, which is generated by souls. Spirits run on emotional energy. Then there's general run-of-the-mill psychic energy, which is basically the same as it is in the real world. Which at the moment I'm having some trouble distinguishing between the two, because I'm an empath and think of everything in terms of emotions, though I also know that it doesn't work that way for everyone.
And the Great Mother, which is the main deity that the Vinithi refer to all the time, is basically the same thing as Mother Nature. There's a duality to the world - God who created everything and Nature who runs it. This is pretty close to what I actually believe, though it doesn't translate exactly to the world of Fortress Launne. And I'm not sure if it'll ever actually come up to the point where I need to detail it out (though I've been wrong before...).
And now I've blathered longwindedly, and I'm still not even done covering everything I've come up with this week, but I'm going to stop now and go to bed.
Meanwhile, I've gotten back into the swing of things for roleplaying. Not that it's needed. It turns out that most of my players aren't around much anymore, and although nobody has actually left the game, it's not looking like it'll revive anytime soon. Which is fine. Christmas break is coming up to throw a wrench into things anyway, so I'll worry in January.
A lot of my non-work time has been spent beta testing the next version of the roleplaying website. The admin guy is going full steam ahead trying to finish it up so he can release it, but there's still lots of bugs to find and fix. Beta testing is always interesting and fun to me, when I have time for it. Stumbling across bugs isn't so hard on its own. But writing down the steps taken to reproduce it takes some time and effort. Writing up bug reports takes as much skill as any other kind of writing, really - there's a need to be concise, precise, and clear. Also, a lot of policy issues seem to come up, when trying to decide how best to implement things. Those generate a lot of interesting discussions.
Meanwhile, to stop blathering meaninglessly and actually get to the original point of this entry...
So, 75k words later, I've managed to pinpoint a whole lot more holes in my setting. Now I'm working on filling them by doing a lot of thinking instead of writing. Once I figure everything out, I'll continue.
[members-only cut]
So, holes. Namely:
1. What exactly do I mean, everything in reality exists in layers?
2. What exactly is the spirit world, and how do the shamans get to it?
3. What's a shaman again? How are they different from regular people?
4. What are spirits? Which things have them? Where do they come from?
5. How is the dream realm related to the spirit realm? And where are they in relation to the physical realm?
6. If Charles is partly fae as he claims, what exactly is fae? Why can't he do what Aliacorba does?
7. What's the Great Cycle? How's it relate to the Great Mother? Where does this leave the Tainted?
8. What kinds of energy are there and how are they related to each other? Physical I know, but emotional? Life? Tainted? psychic? Other?
9. Do souls exist? If so, what are they in relation to everything else?
10. Amulets? Huh?
So basically, my setting has always been extremely flimsy. ;) Getting less so in the past week, though.
I saw a short cartoon film back in high school, called (I think) Flatlanders [from 1982]. Basically it was about a family of 2D objects living on a plane. One day, the protagonist (I can't remember what he was - a circle, a square, a triangle maybe...) meets a 3D object. Only, because the 2D object can only see in 2D, the 3D object looked like a circle. Furthermore, the circle just sort of magically appeared in the protagonist's house, and had a magical power of being able to make himself grow and shrink in size.
It wasn't a circle though. It was a sphere, intersecting the plane. And the sphere pulled the protagonist off of his plane and took him on a merry jaunt through a 3D world, then returned him safely back to his house where he spent the rest of his life trying to tell other people about all the wonders he saw, except they didn't believe him and thought he was mad.
So ... that's sort of the nutshell summary of the layers of reality in Fortress Launne. Each layer is like a different plane. The Vinithi shamans can see the ones nearest to the physical plane (a "realm") in addition to the physical plane, and they can also reach these other realms by walking to them. When they do, they disappear off the physical realm. Like a sphere going all the way through a 2D plane until it no longer intersects.
In Amulet I I've so far mentioned "dream realm" and "spirit realm" and "abyss." The shamans mostly walk to the spirit realm. I've decided that they can't reach the dream realm - not because they can't see it, and attempt to walk there, but because the environment is not conducive to life. Sort of like you could send a human to the moon without benefit of, say, a rocketship around them. However, the chances that they'll survive the trip are nonexistent, and even if they did somehow survive, they wouldn't last long on the moon, either.
So it is with the dream realm, which can only be reached by ... umm, dreaming. Shamans have to get there the same way as everyone else, and can't take their bodies with them.
Then there's spirits. Everything on the physical realm has one. There are also others that didn't originate on the physical realm, but can manifest there if they really want to.
Some of those become fae. And some of those fae blend with living creatures to form ... uh, whatever Charles' mother was. And then somehow got passed on to Charles. Who can't actually do any of the things that the Vinithi shamans can, because he's sort of the opposite thing - a spirit that originated from Somewhere Else and manifested permanently in the physical realm. While the shamans originate in the physical realm and can walk elsewhere. (Sort of. This one still needs work...)
There are more spirit realms than just the ones that the shamans can reach. For example, the spirit wolf pack of Temple are not on the same realm, though I need to go back and figure out exactly what the differences are at some later point.
There can be more dimensions beyond the 3D analog too. Souls, I've decided, when the bodies they're attached to die, leave the 3D analog as well and go off in some 4D direction, where not even the shamans can follow. Souls are sort of a type of spirit.
Then there's the whole thing with the Great Cycle. Which mostly refers to the great cycle of life and living in particular. Life energy, therefore, is generated by the Great Cycle. The Tainted, meanwhile, have stepped outside of the cycle; Tainted energy is the energy of death, and it comes from ... elsewhere. Some place dark and unspeakable, and possibly what will eventually spark any horror I try to do with this setting in the future.
There's also been the dynamic of light vs. shadow. The realm of the abyss is where shadows come from, and it's a place where darkness isn't just an absence of light, and shadows can be entities in their own rights.
My model for the Great Cycle has mostly been shaped by my lava lamp, I think. It has a very predictable cycle of what the lava does, from the time I turn the thing on, until the blob of lava no longer rises and just sits on the bottom.
I've named the stages. There's gestation, which is when the light is on but everything is still cold. There's birth, when the first tentacle of lava shoots out from the bottom, gets most of the way to the top, and instantly hardens. Infancy is the period after that, when nothing much happens while lava continues to heat up. Sometimes more spikes of lava shoot up and instantly harden, or the bottom disk tilts and causes the solid tubes to break and fall down. Childhood is when there are many small lava bubbles going up and down, while most of it is still solid or semisolid, and there's hills and peaks and up to three individual geysers putting up bubbles at the same time. Bubbles start getting gradually larger.
Adolescence begins when all of the lava at the bottom suddenly rises up together and goes up to the top of the lamp in a single column. Adolescence is the period of one single undulating central column, where sometimes it looks like it might break into a stalactite and stalagmite, but mostly doesn't.
Finally the thing reaches maturity. The column breaks up into blobs of lavas of all shapes and sizes. This then continues for a long time. Lava spends a lot more time at the top than bottom overall. At first everything moves up and down fairly quickly, but it gradually slows down after a while.
At senescence, the blobs have slowed down so they look like they're having trouble coming up with the energy to rise again, after falling to the bottom. They tend to have a distinct shape to them too, sort of like a 3D comma or an upside down teardrop where the end is sort of curved inward. Sometimes it will form a senescence column, which looks a lot like the adolescence column, though it doesn't last as long. Sometimes a column will seem to revive the lamp a bit, allowing for more time of "maturity" like activity.
Eventually, though, all the lava falls to the bottom and becomes one or two big blobs. Sometimes they'll continue trying to rise, in that they'll get up far enough to break contact with the bottom. But they only go up halfway if they're lucky before they start falling. Finally they just sit at the bottom, and their 'heads' continue to sink lower and lower. At that point, the show is over. I turn the lamp off.
Ummm. Anyway. To get back to the worldbuilding... so the Great Cycle is just like that, where each individual life of a creature is like a small blob of lava, going up and down in the lamp, over and over in many reincarnations. Eventually the cycle will run down, which will possibly generate all sorts of interesting horror stories later on down the line when my original Fortress Launne material has run out. That's not going to happen for a while, though.
I was also going to talk about energy. Physical energy is obvious - it's exactly the same kind people are familiar with, with lightning being the example in nature that comes to mind. Then there's life energy. Life generates it and radiates it as a part of the business of living. Tainted Ones feed off of this to stay animated, though they also transform it into something called Tainted energy, which they can use to do a number of things that living things can't. The original Tainting happened from ... "elsewhere." Outside of the Great Cycle. Something that is a symptom of the fact that things are running down, I think.
Then there's emotional energy, which is generated by souls. Spirits run on emotional energy. Then there's general run-of-the-mill psychic energy, which is basically the same as it is in the real world. Which at the moment I'm having some trouble distinguishing between the two, because I'm an empath and think of everything in terms of emotions, though I also know that it doesn't work that way for everyone.
And the Great Mother, which is the main deity that the Vinithi refer to all the time, is basically the same thing as Mother Nature. There's a duality to the world - God who created everything and Nature who runs it. This is pretty close to what I actually believe, though it doesn't translate exactly to the world of Fortress Launne. And I'm not sure if it'll ever actually come up to the point where I need to detail it out (though I've been wrong before...).
And now I've blathered longwindedly, and I'm still not even done covering everything I've come up with this week, but I'm going to stop now and go to bed.
2006/10/04
Some disorganized brainstorm blatherings
Well, Nanowrimo 2006 is looming on the horizon, and I've gotten myself signed back in on the forums there again. Things are starting to heat up.
I'm thinking of taking off all of November from my desk job for this, in an attempt to write 100k words. Last year that idea made perfect sense. At this time this year?
All of my ideas have gone Foom! :(
So, what's on the plate as possibilities? Last year, coming off of Amulet II, I was figuring to either do Birthright (semi-sequel to Temple), or the Triangle/Fall of Myan pair of stories. At the present time, none of those three books are even remotely on the table. I think they went back into the fridge.
Instead I'm staring down Amulet I/Taint again. Only I'm changing everything. I have to, after I finally pinpointed why it failed so utterly last year - after I posted a short whine about it on the "IHMAWTD" board (newly renamed "NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul" - which I don't like quite as much as I liked the old name, personally, but for some reason the people in charge seem not to like "I hate myself and want to die"). Anyway, so the thread query was "How close are you to ready?" and my reply was:
My original plan for Amulet I was that Edward and Iorli got into a severe disagreement with each other, and that Edward tainted Aliacorba as a form of revenge against Iorli. Well, unfortunately, none of those three people want to do that. They flatly refuse to cooperate. :p
So, brainstorm some new ideas. First, who's Edward? Second, who's Aliacorba? Third, who's Iorli? Answers in WoD terms...
[members-only cut]
Edward started out in a noble family across the sea. His father is a Lasombra that has had a longrunning feud with the Gangrel. Lord Duchene hates Gangrel with all his being and wants to see them all annihilated. The Gangrel embraced Edward to be mean to Edward's father. Thereafter, his father cast him out and wanted him dead. Edward loved his father, and then hated his father, who nearly killed him.
Edward has two brothers - Charles and James. Those were loyal to their father until the father nearly killed Edward. They didn't like what was happening to their brother and so they took a stand and switched sides. They helped Edward avoid total destruction and kept him afloat until he could heal himself sufficiently to wake back up.
In the timeframe of Amulet I, Edward had only recently come back to consciousness, is still relatively weak compared to where he was before the last battle with his father, and is hiding out in the swamps that will someday become Fortress Launne. He knows his father is still alive, and also knows that his father doesn't know he's awake nor where he is, and until he can come up with some effective means of defending himself, he wants to lie low. (All of which is a lot more plausible than my flimsy motivation ideas for Edward before.)
Meanwhile, Aliacorba is a shaman. The native folk have been hunted nearly to extinction by the outlanders, and they've been hiding in the swamps for a decade or two. It's been a while since any outlander has killed any of the native folk, but they were still keeping vigilant all through Aliacorba's youth.
At the timeframe of the story, the native folk had only recently been venturing out of the swamps to see what was going on in more distant parts of the area. The tribal villages closest to the fort have discovered Edward's tiny colony, and they've tentatively established some trade.
Basically, after Edward moved in, he told everyone else that his outfit would be keeping watch on the native folk in case they tried to attack any settlers farther afield. And he made it clear that his outpost was adequate to the task, and he put a stop to any more people coming into the area to settle, since it's still too dangerous. Edward has a strong interest in keeping things small and lowkey, so the size of his colony is just big enough to support himself and his brother Charles, who are the two Tainted.
(Though actually, Charles might turn out to be a mage of some sort. That's still up in the air at the moment.)
Anyway, the native folk noticed that the outlander attacks had stopped. So they started venturing out of the swamps to look. And found Edward there, and set up trade, and then later on Aliacorba (who lives in a village farther into the swamps) came by with a trading party with his brother Ahlosarka. And that's how they met.
The tribal setup is that there's a village chief, then a warrior chief, then a shaman. Village chief leads general affairs, warrior chief takes care of defense, security, and hunting. Shaman keeps everything in harmony with Nature. There are also elders who are tribal sages, and the village chief consults with them, but they've retired from running things for the most part.
Aliacorba is a young shaman but already very skilled and well-known as a healer. He's in his early 30s, married to the sister of the village chief, has a four year old son, and an unborn daughter. His brother Ahlosarka is the warrior chief. It's not a very large village, as the tribe consists of many smaller ones rather than a few large ones. Easier to hide that way.
And Iorli? He's a cougar spirit. Aliacorba's family has cougar as their protective totem, and Iorli protects Aliacorba in particular. He does have a mind of his own, and is sentient, but follows Aliacorba's lead on things.
As nature spirits go, he and Tainted do not go together at all. The only reason he would spend any time in Edward's presence (without attempting to kill him) is if Aliacorba wished him to.
(So right away the setup shifts from having Aliacorba being a minor pawn, to Aliacorba playing a much more important role, while Iorli's role is lessened.)
Later on after everything is over, Aliacorba forges a new pact between Iorli and any of his descendants who will become shamans. Shamanism is something that one is born into, and it's a gift granted by the Great Mother. It tends to follow family lines. Aliacorba forges a promise that Iorli will not allow any more of the line's shamans to become Tainted. There's a protective ward built in as well, which prevents the Tainted from harming them, which grants the cougar spirits more power so they can do it, and also more independence. This is how the Iorli line of cougar spirits became powerful enough, and intelligent enough, to form a clan.
And that is the pact that Thomas had to break to save Janis a century later in Temple. Only Thomas could have broken it, by gifting her with some of his taint. It ended the pact, brought an end to the cougar clan, and also nullified Janis as a latent shaman; but it saved her life.
Sort of. The details still need to be nailed down a bit better than that, I think, but that's workable for the moment.
But before everything is over ...
So what happened was that Edward and Aliacorba met during a trading trip to the fort. Aliacorba could tell that Edward was stepped out of the cycle just by looking at him. Edward was the first Tainted Aliacorba met. Edward, meanwhile, could see the extra power Aliacorba had, and he knew that his own recuperation would go much more swiftly if he could draw on the shamanic energy for himself. As it was, he wanted Aliacorba's help as a healer, but wasn't sure whether he could reveal his greatest weaknesses by asking to feed from him.
Edward also didn't know what Tainting does to shamans. He'd seen people being tainted before, and after the initial shock, they tended to adjust well. He had adjusted well enough, and although he isn't fond of being Gangrel, Tainting itself isn't something that bothers him.
Edward is also prone to the VtM lunacy flaw. During full moons he becomes a full-blown beast. (This flaw got passed to Aliacorba as well.) It was during a full moon that whatever happened happened, when he had the least control over himself, and he nearly killed Aliacorba without meaning to. So that Aliacorba wouldn't die, Edward tainted him.
Aliacorba lost more than the average newly Tainted. For the shamans, it's like an MtA mage having their avatar shredded upon embrace. He wasn't very happy about the turn of events.
And that's what I've managed to work out in the past couple of days.
I'm thinking of taking off all of November from my desk job for this, in an attempt to write 100k words. Last year that idea made perfect sense. At this time this year?
All of my ideas have gone Foom! :(
So, what's on the plate as possibilities? Last year, coming off of Amulet II, I was figuring to either do Birthright (semi-sequel to Temple), or the Triangle/Fall of Myan pair of stories. At the present time, none of those three books are even remotely on the table. I think they went back into the fridge.
Instead I'm staring down Amulet I/Taint again. Only I'm changing everything. I have to, after I finally pinpointed why it failed so utterly last year - after I posted a short whine about it on the "IHMAWTD" board (newly renamed "NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul" - which I don't like quite as much as I liked the old name, personally, but for some reason the people in charge seem not to like "I hate myself and want to die"). Anyway, so the thread query was "How close are you to ready?" and my reply was:
Umm... "ready" ? What's that?? O.O
I thought I knew what I was going to do this year, but then I started trying to nail down backstory and setting elements, and then several of the key characters decided that they don't like my ideas of who they are or what they're supposed to be doing, and so now they're not speaking to me. :( I suppose you might say I'm going backwards away from the starting line at an alarming pace.
My original plan for Amulet I was that Edward and Iorli got into a severe disagreement with each other, and that Edward tainted Aliacorba as a form of revenge against Iorli. Well, unfortunately, none of those three people want to do that. They flatly refuse to cooperate. :p
So, brainstorm some new ideas. First, who's Edward? Second, who's Aliacorba? Third, who's Iorli? Answers in WoD terms...
[members-only cut]
Edward started out in a noble family across the sea. His father is a Lasombra that has had a longrunning feud with the Gangrel. Lord Duchene hates Gangrel with all his being and wants to see them all annihilated. The Gangrel embraced Edward to be mean to Edward's father. Thereafter, his father cast him out and wanted him dead. Edward loved his father, and then hated his father, who nearly killed him.
Edward has two brothers - Charles and James. Those were loyal to their father until the father nearly killed Edward. They didn't like what was happening to their brother and so they took a stand and switched sides. They helped Edward avoid total destruction and kept him afloat until he could heal himself sufficiently to wake back up.
In the timeframe of Amulet I, Edward had only recently come back to consciousness, is still relatively weak compared to where he was before the last battle with his father, and is hiding out in the swamps that will someday become Fortress Launne. He knows his father is still alive, and also knows that his father doesn't know he's awake nor where he is, and until he can come up with some effective means of defending himself, he wants to lie low. (All of which is a lot more plausible than my flimsy motivation ideas for Edward before.)
Meanwhile, Aliacorba is a shaman. The native folk have been hunted nearly to extinction by the outlanders, and they've been hiding in the swamps for a decade or two. It's been a while since any outlander has killed any of the native folk, but they were still keeping vigilant all through Aliacorba's youth.
At the timeframe of the story, the native folk had only recently been venturing out of the swamps to see what was going on in more distant parts of the area. The tribal villages closest to the fort have discovered Edward's tiny colony, and they've tentatively established some trade.
Basically, after Edward moved in, he told everyone else that his outfit would be keeping watch on the native folk in case they tried to attack any settlers farther afield. And he made it clear that his outpost was adequate to the task, and he put a stop to any more people coming into the area to settle, since it's still too dangerous. Edward has a strong interest in keeping things small and lowkey, so the size of his colony is just big enough to support himself and his brother Charles, who are the two Tainted.
(Though actually, Charles might turn out to be a mage of some sort. That's still up in the air at the moment.)
Anyway, the native folk noticed that the outlander attacks had stopped. So they started venturing out of the swamps to look. And found Edward there, and set up trade, and then later on Aliacorba (who lives in a village farther into the swamps) came by with a trading party with his brother Ahlosarka. And that's how they met.
The tribal setup is that there's a village chief, then a warrior chief, then a shaman. Village chief leads general affairs, warrior chief takes care of defense, security, and hunting. Shaman keeps everything in harmony with Nature. There are also elders who are tribal sages, and the village chief consults with them, but they've retired from running things for the most part.
Aliacorba is a young shaman but already very skilled and well-known as a healer. He's in his early 30s, married to the sister of the village chief, has a four year old son, and an unborn daughter. His brother Ahlosarka is the warrior chief. It's not a very large village, as the tribe consists of many smaller ones rather than a few large ones. Easier to hide that way.
And Iorli? He's a cougar spirit. Aliacorba's family has cougar as their protective totem, and Iorli protects Aliacorba in particular. He does have a mind of his own, and is sentient, but follows Aliacorba's lead on things.
As nature spirits go, he and Tainted do not go together at all. The only reason he would spend any time in Edward's presence (without attempting to kill him) is if Aliacorba wished him to.
(So right away the setup shifts from having Aliacorba being a minor pawn, to Aliacorba playing a much more important role, while Iorli's role is lessened.)
Later on after everything is over, Aliacorba forges a new pact between Iorli and any of his descendants who will become shamans. Shamanism is something that one is born into, and it's a gift granted by the Great Mother. It tends to follow family lines. Aliacorba forges a promise that Iorli will not allow any more of the line's shamans to become Tainted. There's a protective ward built in as well, which prevents the Tainted from harming them, which grants the cougar spirits more power so they can do it, and also more independence. This is how the Iorli line of cougar spirits became powerful enough, and intelligent enough, to form a clan.
And that is the pact that Thomas had to break to save Janis a century later in Temple. Only Thomas could have broken it, by gifting her with some of his taint. It ended the pact, brought an end to the cougar clan, and also nullified Janis as a latent shaman; but it saved her life.
Sort of. The details still need to be nailed down a bit better than that, I think, but that's workable for the moment.
But before everything is over ...
So what happened was that Edward and Aliacorba met during a trading trip to the fort. Aliacorba could tell that Edward was stepped out of the cycle just by looking at him. Edward was the first Tainted Aliacorba met. Edward, meanwhile, could see the extra power Aliacorba had, and he knew that his own recuperation would go much more swiftly if he could draw on the shamanic energy for himself. As it was, he wanted Aliacorba's help as a healer, but wasn't sure whether he could reveal his greatest weaknesses by asking to feed from him.
Edward also didn't know what Tainting does to shamans. He'd seen people being tainted before, and after the initial shock, they tended to adjust well. He had adjusted well enough, and although he isn't fond of being Gangrel, Tainting itself isn't something that bothers him.
Edward is also prone to the VtM lunacy flaw. During full moons he becomes a full-blown beast. (This flaw got passed to Aliacorba as well.) It was during a full moon that whatever happened happened, when he had the least control over himself, and he nearly killed Aliacorba without meaning to. So that Aliacorba wouldn't die, Edward tainted him.
Aliacorba lost more than the average newly Tainted. For the shamans, it's like an MtA mage having their avatar shredded upon embrace. He wasn't very happy about the turn of events.
And that's what I've managed to work out in the past couple of days.
2006/07/12
This is starting to get rather depressing
18 / 90 days to go | 72 / 90 days gone
41,121 / 90,000 words done | 30,879 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 10,711
Blogs: 23,083
The end of the month is only 18 days away, and I'm a month behind on the SFR wordcount. :( I suck. I suck I suck I suck. Everyone else seems to be going great this month, but I'm stuck in the mud.
Logistically speaking, I ought to work on Dragonfly.
Dragonfly is just about the last thing on my mind right now. Instead, I'm still banging my head against Amulet I. There's more backstory to be built before I can figure out what the frell I'm doing with that, but it won't leave me alone until I figure it out. :(
[members-only cut]
Basically, the question is, how does Iorli and Aliacorba fit into the grand scheme of things, cosmology-wise? The reality of the world consists of layers of overlapping planes. Most people are only aware of the physical plane - and are quite able to live out successful, happy lives on just the physical plane alone, completely oblivious to all the other ones.
Then there's people like Aliacorba, who is aware of the other planes. He can speak to the spirits and non-physical beings who dwell there. This makes him a shaman.
What about Iorli? Iorli can traverse the other planes, where Aliacorba can only look. But he isn't simply a plane-walker. The real way to look at it is that he's aware of the whole of reality, and not just a small part of it. And he can go to the other places that the mortals wouldn't even think about.
The outlanders are completely unaware that there's anything other than the physical plane, by and large. The native folk are aware and more in tune with the spirits of the lands. And they revere their shamans.
How do the shamans get to be the way they are? And what is Iorli, exactly? How does he fit in? He's not a spirit. He's Aliacorba's uncle. Somewhere along the way he became half-spirit - either by birth or later on - and if it was later on, why? how?
There's something fundamental I'm missing about all this, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through roleplay at the same glacial pace as I've been going for months. My paladin on USWest is now 25 and about to hit the Council in Travincal. And I've been doing a lot of non-fiction writing instead.
For starters, jase is about to roll out the next version of RPoL, and there's some odds and ends he needs help with. The part that caught my interest was a need for category blurbs. Descriptions and definitions of what each genre is for. They're harder to write than it first appears, but I've contributed six of them so far. There's 24 of them total. (And two of those are also already written up, by others.)
Also, I've been doing a ton of philosophical rantings, helping people find their paths. Teenagers needing to be thwacked over the head with clue-by-fours, mostly. But I'm making some progress, I think, with one of them. Another is in some serious denial, but I keep trying anyway. Writing isn't one of the main callings of my life. Teaching people how to live is. I feel good when I manage to do that.
That's what I've been doing for the past half-week or so. Guess I'll continue until something breaks loose and I can write something fictionlike again.
41,121 / 90,000 words done | 30,879 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 10,711
Blogs: 23,083
The end of the month is only 18 days away, and I'm a month behind on the SFR wordcount. :( I suck. I suck I suck I suck. Everyone else seems to be going great this month, but I'm stuck in the mud.
Logistically speaking, I ought to work on Dragonfly.
Dragonfly is just about the last thing on my mind right now. Instead, I'm still banging my head against Amulet I. There's more backstory to be built before I can figure out what the frell I'm doing with that, but it won't leave me alone until I figure it out. :(
[members-only cut]
Basically, the question is, how does Iorli and Aliacorba fit into the grand scheme of things, cosmology-wise? The reality of the world consists of layers of overlapping planes. Most people are only aware of the physical plane - and are quite able to live out successful, happy lives on just the physical plane alone, completely oblivious to all the other ones.
Then there's people like Aliacorba, who is aware of the other planes. He can speak to the spirits and non-physical beings who dwell there. This makes him a shaman.
What about Iorli? Iorli can traverse the other planes, where Aliacorba can only look. But he isn't simply a plane-walker. The real way to look at it is that he's aware of the whole of reality, and not just a small part of it. And he can go to the other places that the mortals wouldn't even think about.
The outlanders are completely unaware that there's anything other than the physical plane, by and large. The native folk are aware and more in tune with the spirits of the lands. And they revere their shamans.
How do the shamans get to be the way they are? And what is Iorli, exactly? How does he fit in? He's not a spirit. He's Aliacorba's uncle. Somewhere along the way he became half-spirit - either by birth or later on - and if it was later on, why? how?
There's something fundamental I'm missing about all this, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through roleplay at the same glacial pace as I've been going for months. My paladin on USWest is now 25 and about to hit the Council in Travincal. And I've been doing a lot of non-fiction writing instead.
For starters, jase is about to roll out the next version of RPoL, and there's some odds and ends he needs help with. The part that caught my interest was a need for category blurbs. Descriptions and definitions of what each genre is for. They're harder to write than it first appears, but I've contributed six of them so far. There's 24 of them total. (And two of those are also already written up, by others.)
Also, I've been doing a ton of philosophical rantings, helping people find their paths. Teenagers needing to be thwacked over the head with clue-by-fours, mostly. But I'm making some progress, I think, with one of them. Another is in some serious denial, but I keep trying anyway. Writing isn't one of the main callings of my life. Teaching people how to live is. I feel good when I manage to do that.
That's what I've been doing for the past half-week or so. Guess I'll continue until something breaks loose and I can write something fictionlike again.
2006/06/30
SFR end of second month
30 / 90 days to go | 60 / 90 days gone
35,973 / 90,000 words done | 24,027 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 8470
Blogs: 20,176
Caught up on all roleplay again (*gasp... wheeze...*). My favorite GM was around to pester me to get my sorry arse in gear, so I did. Took me all night, but I did. Managed to reduce the "words behind" category slightly in the process.
[members-only cut]
Major new development for the July novel dare story (which I've decided just earlier today is going to be my July novel dare story (which I hadn't actually planned to join until today either)): Aniqa is going to be Craig's original target, he's going to catch up with her while she's in the process of failing abysmally at convincing Aaron that vampires are nice, which would've been getting her in trouble with Hernando anyway even if Craig hadn't been around. I like it that way because that's what happened in the game, and I can just write forward from that; it makes perfect logical sense for the story to flow forward that way. I'll be changing the names of Aniqa and Hernando, of course, as those aren't my characters. Basically I just need to retain the basic idea of them and their plot functions.
I'll be ditching a large number of side plots from the game, though. First, Mariah has explicitly said that she doesn't want me to write about her character or the werewolf pack, so I'm just going to omit the werewolves entirely. Then, in the game there's room for a lot more vampires than my story; I'm just going to leave it as Rumen and Hernando, with Aniqa as one of Hernando's underlings. In the game there was a third vampire that was muscling in on Hernando's territory, but that's not really terribly relevant to what I have in mind, and it's not my story anyhow, so out it goes. Also, I'll probably skip the whole Damisa thing. She was fun for developing some of Rumen's entourage, but not terribly relevant either. I'm not even sure how I'm going to work in his cat collection as it is, or whether I ought to, fun as they were.
I have an opening scene in mind too. Craig arriving, finding Aniqa, getting ready to kill her off, and Hernando stepping in. They have a chat that ends with Rumen introduced at the end.
I need to rename the characters that aren't mine, real soon like.
But it's past dawn, I'm not actually sleepy, but tomorrow is going to drag badly, I can tell already...
Oh, and I got nothing housework-related done today either. Must... start... uncluttering...
35,973 / 90,000 words done | 24,027 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 8470
Blogs: 20,176
Caught up on all roleplay again (*gasp... wheeze...*). My favorite GM was around to pester me to get my sorry arse in gear, so I did. Took me all night, but I did. Managed to reduce the "words behind" category slightly in the process.
[members-only cut]
Major new development for the July novel dare story (which I've decided just earlier today is going to be my July novel dare story (which I hadn't actually planned to join until today either)): Aniqa is going to be Craig's original target, he's going to catch up with her while she's in the process of failing abysmally at convincing Aaron that vampires are nice, which would've been getting her in trouble with Hernando anyway even if Craig hadn't been around. I like it that way because that's what happened in the game, and I can just write forward from that; it makes perfect logical sense for the story to flow forward that way. I'll be changing the names of Aniqa and Hernando, of course, as those aren't my characters. Basically I just need to retain the basic idea of them and their plot functions.
I'll be ditching a large number of side plots from the game, though. First, Mariah has explicitly said that she doesn't want me to write about her character or the werewolf pack, so I'm just going to omit the werewolves entirely. Then, in the game there's room for a lot more vampires than my story; I'm just going to leave it as Rumen and Hernando, with Aniqa as one of Hernando's underlings. In the game there was a third vampire that was muscling in on Hernando's territory, but that's not really terribly relevant to what I have in mind, and it's not my story anyhow, so out it goes. Also, I'll probably skip the whole Damisa thing. She was fun for developing some of Rumen's entourage, but not terribly relevant either. I'm not even sure how I'm going to work in his cat collection as it is, or whether I ought to, fun as they were.
I have an opening scene in mind too. Craig arriving, finding Aniqa, getting ready to kill her off, and Hernando stepping in. They have a chat that ends with Rumen introduced at the end.
I need to rename the characters that aren't mine, real soon like.
But it's past dawn, I'm not actually sleepy, but tomorrow is going to drag badly, I can tell already...
Oh, and I got nothing housework-related done today either. Must... start... uncluttering...
2006/06/27
Comprehensive Update
33 / 90 days to go | 57 / 90 days gone
32,798 / 90,000 words done | 24,202 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 7813
Blogs: 17,658
Hmmm. Time just keeps slipping on by. Nearly two months into SFR, I'm 24k words behind, and I'm not likely to make a comeback anytime soon. Maybe after my friend's visit, which is creeping up on me a lot faster than I'd like. She's going to be here next week! :o
On the bright side, I cleaned most of two bathrooms. :) Both toilets are done now, at least as done as they can get. (Anyone have any clue how to get rid of ring-around-the-toilet?) I cleaned the worst of the three sinks, and I'd cleaned the tub and other two sinks in recent history so they shouldn't be too bad to do again. Now I'm eyeing the kitchen. I'm thinking baby steps there, too. Maybe if I just do one section of counter at a time and hope that I'm on enough of a roll by the end to do the fridge... The hard part is just moving stuff out of the way so I can get underneath things. The stovetop isn't too bad at the moment (I clean that off a lot more often than elsewhere).
Then there's vacuuming everywhere else, tossing a ton of paper-type things (mostly junk mail), hiding the rest in my pantry or something ... maybe some dusting. Also laundry; I need to wash all the comforters, which means lugging them down to a laundromat with a big enough washer and dryer, spending lots of quarters.
My friend isn't going to be here that long, and we're going to be out sightseeing for a lot of it, so hopefully she won't have time to notice anything I miss.
Yeah, okay, so I'm a total slob. At least nobody has to look at it most of the time besides me.
[members-only cut]
After the visit, though, it should be clear sailing through the rest of July. I have so many writing projects going on it's starting to get confusing. So ... a list:
1. Dragonfly. In light of ellsea's excellent critique, I now have a lot more of a clue what I need to do with it.
The whole thing was based on a couple of dreams, which is why it looks like a bunch of weakly connected fragments. But I know what it means to me. It's about my friend (the one that's visiting soon, actually), and how she pulled me out of the abyss I was in when we met. I was sitting around waiting to die, and she showed me life. Then last year (when I had the dream), our paths had already diverged though neither of us were quite ready to admit it yet; she had her own life to lead, her own errands to keep, and she couldn't forever stay. And so I had to let her go, and go on without her. But I didn't die. I guess it's more like an ascension than a death (if anyone here follows Stargate). I guess in some ways, she brought me to the wall but I had to cross it by myself.
I still don't know what the elephants mean, though. That whole thing was kind of nebulous. The way I wrote it, that was the way it happened in the dream. I looked over the wall and knew there were elephants, and there were signs of their habitation, but we didn't actually see any of them.
Hmmm. It's a lot like other animals in my dreams. The kind that lurk. Crocodiles hanging from trees by their tails, for example; that was in a dream several years ago. They were menacing with very sharp teeth, and I was afraid to pass them, even though that was the way I needed to go. Perhaps it's time to look up elephants in ye olde dream dictionary and see what they're supposed to mean...
(ten minutes later)
Elephants: strength, power, long memory; sometimes the ability to forgive and forget.
Domestic animals: a part of your animal nature that has been domesticated or tamed, i.e. integrated into your personality.
Hmmmmm. Think I'm going to need to sleep on that one. There's what that part of the dream means to me personally, and then there's working in the dream dictionary version into Dragonfly (if what it means to me personally turns out to be incompatible).
Either way, I ought to reread this whole book. It's Interpreting Your Dreams by W. Lindsay Jacob, M.D. It's a paperback I picked up decades ago, I have no clue where, but somehow everything it says seems to be spot-on for me. I've looked through other dream-related books before, but didn't like any of them as much as this one.
2. Stranger on a Bus. I started editting Chapter 1, and I basically know what rough spots need revising in it. The hard part is done; that was the first four paragraphs which got completely rewritten into three paragraphs that somehow managed to have more total words. As most people have commented, my first draft is remarkably clean overall, so most of it should just be light editting. I'm hoping once I get back into this, it'll go fairly quickly, and then I can get back to figuring out how to end Chapter 10.
3. Scenes from the Inside of a Chinese Takeout. I haven't written anything new for this one recently. Still one more lengthy setup post, and then I want to dump out a whole bunch of accumulated thoughts from the past couple months. Strangely, I didn't have anything noteworthy thoughts last weekend. Maybe my brain is pausing for me to catch up.
4. Fortress Launne. That's kind of a gigantic chunk that's all related. I have lots of ruminations going on all the time, thinking about my characters and plotting their dooms and such. ;) Most of it is just scattered stray thoughts that I don't write down.
4a. Temple. The opening scene needs a lot of work. Something C_Wolfe said in Writing Jam is kicking some gears into motion, though. Maybe if I ditched the first full paragraph entirely, or somehow found somewhere farther down to move it, and put the intro to Chance up top...
4b. Amulet II. I still need to finish the second half of this one. But it'll take a lot of immersion to get back into it, as the plot was a gargantuan tangled mass.
4c. Birthright. The more of these I write, the more clear and straightforward I seem to get. Birthright is going to be so simple compared to the first two. It'll follow a girl as she discovers everything along with the readers. Hopefully I won't need to sneak in infodumps much at all. And when I think about eventual marketing, Birthright would probably be the first one that ought to go out.
4d. Everything Else. I think about the original seed of the whole venture, Aliacorba Thomas Cougar. I listen to I Dare You by Shinedown, over and over, and he's speaking to me through them. "Even in madness I know you still believe. Paint me on canvas so I become what you could never be." And I do still believe. No matter how much doubt keeps sneaking up on me. And I will write him down so he becomes greater than me.
5. What is it to be Human? Rumen hasn't abandoned me. I see glimmers of him in my posts for other characters that are cut from the same archetype.
In his past, Rumen lost his first human servant to a vampire hunter - and for revenge he killed that hunter and the hunter's entire family line. When I made Craig Turner, a Hunter: the Reckoning character, for a different game, I used that plot thread; Craig was the only survivor of that line. I have some ideas baking about having him turn up in the same city and confronting Rumen. It might make for an interesting story of undetermined length.
The game itself is still dead. The GM doesn't seem to think so, but there's only three of us even looking anymore - me, him, and one other who is so swamped with Real Life that she barely has time to run her own game. I loved that game, but I'm thinking it's time to move on.
6. Roleplay. As usual, I'm being way too slow about updating my game. I have lots of scattered ruminative thoughts about that one, too. Mainly involving the mage backstory, which is going to get tangled up with some of what the wolves are currently doing. And some of which I need to pin down before I write the next round of posts. Like with every other writing task lately, though, it's going slowly. My players aren't being too terribly fast either, though, and the vampire side of things seems to have died entirely.
I'm mostly keeping up in my other games. Two of the Dante games are moving along pretty fast, and there's a third where I need to post. (Dante being my favorite GM on rpol; I've mentioned him a number of times in these blogs before. Dante is his GMing name, not his real name.)
32,798 / 90,000 words done | 24,202 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 7813
Blogs: 17,658
Hmmm. Time just keeps slipping on by. Nearly two months into SFR, I'm 24k words behind, and I'm not likely to make a comeback anytime soon. Maybe after my friend's visit, which is creeping up on me a lot faster than I'd like. She's going to be here next week! :o
On the bright side, I cleaned most of two bathrooms. :) Both toilets are done now, at least as done as they can get. (Anyone have any clue how to get rid of ring-around-the-toilet?) I cleaned the worst of the three sinks, and I'd cleaned the tub and other two sinks in recent history so they shouldn't be too bad to do again. Now I'm eyeing the kitchen. I'm thinking baby steps there, too. Maybe if I just do one section of counter at a time and hope that I'm on enough of a roll by the end to do the fridge... The hard part is just moving stuff out of the way so I can get underneath things. The stovetop isn't too bad at the moment (I clean that off a lot more often than elsewhere).
Then there's vacuuming everywhere else, tossing a ton of paper-type things (mostly junk mail), hiding the rest in my pantry or something ... maybe some dusting. Also laundry; I need to wash all the comforters, which means lugging them down to a laundromat with a big enough washer and dryer, spending lots of quarters.
My friend isn't going to be here that long, and we're going to be out sightseeing for a lot of it, so hopefully she won't have time to notice anything I miss.
Yeah, okay, so I'm a total slob. At least nobody has to look at it most of the time besides me.
[members-only cut]
After the visit, though, it should be clear sailing through the rest of July. I have so many writing projects going on it's starting to get confusing. So ... a list:
1. Dragonfly. In light of ellsea's excellent critique, I now have a lot more of a clue what I need to do with it.
The whole thing was based on a couple of dreams, which is why it looks like a bunch of weakly connected fragments. But I know what it means to me. It's about my friend (the one that's visiting soon, actually), and how she pulled me out of the abyss I was in when we met. I was sitting around waiting to die, and she showed me life. Then last year (when I had the dream), our paths had already diverged though neither of us were quite ready to admit it yet; she had her own life to lead, her own errands to keep, and she couldn't forever stay. And so I had to let her go, and go on without her. But I didn't die. I guess it's more like an ascension than a death (if anyone here follows Stargate). I guess in some ways, she brought me to the wall but I had to cross it by myself.
I still don't know what the elephants mean, though. That whole thing was kind of nebulous. The way I wrote it, that was the way it happened in the dream. I looked over the wall and knew there were elephants, and there were signs of their habitation, but we didn't actually see any of them.
Hmmm. It's a lot like other animals in my dreams. The kind that lurk. Crocodiles hanging from trees by their tails, for example; that was in a dream several years ago. They were menacing with very sharp teeth, and I was afraid to pass them, even though that was the way I needed to go. Perhaps it's time to look up elephants in ye olde dream dictionary and see what they're supposed to mean...
(ten minutes later)
Elephants: strength, power, long memory; sometimes the ability to forgive and forget.
Domestic animals: a part of your animal nature that has been domesticated or tamed, i.e. integrated into your personality.
Hmmmmm. Think I'm going to need to sleep on that one. There's what that part of the dream means to me personally, and then there's working in the dream dictionary version into Dragonfly (if what it means to me personally turns out to be incompatible).
Either way, I ought to reread this whole book. It's Interpreting Your Dreams by W. Lindsay Jacob, M.D. It's a paperback I picked up decades ago, I have no clue where, but somehow everything it says seems to be spot-on for me. I've looked through other dream-related books before, but didn't like any of them as much as this one.
2. Stranger on a Bus. I started editting Chapter 1, and I basically know what rough spots need revising in it. The hard part is done; that was the first four paragraphs which got completely rewritten into three paragraphs that somehow managed to have more total words. As most people have commented, my first draft is remarkably clean overall, so most of it should just be light editting. I'm hoping once I get back into this, it'll go fairly quickly, and then I can get back to figuring out how to end Chapter 10.
3. Scenes from the Inside of a Chinese Takeout. I haven't written anything new for this one recently. Still one more lengthy setup post, and then I want to dump out a whole bunch of accumulated thoughts from the past couple months. Strangely, I didn't have anything noteworthy thoughts last weekend. Maybe my brain is pausing for me to catch up.
4. Fortress Launne. That's kind of a gigantic chunk that's all related. I have lots of ruminations going on all the time, thinking about my characters and plotting their dooms and such. ;) Most of it is just scattered stray thoughts that I don't write down.
4a. Temple. The opening scene needs a lot of work. Something C_Wolfe said in Writing Jam is kicking some gears into motion, though. Maybe if I ditched the first full paragraph entirely, or somehow found somewhere farther down to move it, and put the intro to Chance up top...
4b. Amulet II. I still need to finish the second half of this one. But it'll take a lot of immersion to get back into it, as the plot was a gargantuan tangled mass.
4c. Birthright. The more of these I write, the more clear and straightforward I seem to get. Birthright is going to be so simple compared to the first two. It'll follow a girl as she discovers everything along with the readers. Hopefully I won't need to sneak in infodumps much at all. And when I think about eventual marketing, Birthright would probably be the first one that ought to go out.
4d. Everything Else. I think about the original seed of the whole venture, Aliacorba Thomas Cougar. I listen to I Dare You by Shinedown, over and over, and he's speaking to me through them. "Even in madness I know you still believe. Paint me on canvas so I become what you could never be." And I do still believe. No matter how much doubt keeps sneaking up on me. And I will write him down so he becomes greater than me.
5. What is it to be Human? Rumen hasn't abandoned me. I see glimmers of him in my posts for other characters that are cut from the same archetype.
In his past, Rumen lost his first human servant to a vampire hunter - and for revenge he killed that hunter and the hunter's entire family line. When I made Craig Turner, a Hunter: the Reckoning character, for a different game, I used that plot thread; Craig was the only survivor of that line. I have some ideas baking about having him turn up in the same city and confronting Rumen. It might make for an interesting story of undetermined length.
The game itself is still dead. The GM doesn't seem to think so, but there's only three of us even looking anymore - me, him, and one other who is so swamped with Real Life that she barely has time to run her own game. I loved that game, but I'm thinking it's time to move on.
6. Roleplay. As usual, I'm being way too slow about updating my game. I have lots of scattered ruminative thoughts about that one, too. Mainly involving the mage backstory, which is going to get tangled up with some of what the wolves are currently doing. And some of which I need to pin down before I write the next round of posts. Like with every other writing task lately, though, it's going slowly. My players aren't being too terribly fast either, though, and the vampire side of things seems to have died entirely.
I'm mostly keeping up in my other games. Two of the Dante games are moving along pretty fast, and there's a third where I need to post. (Dante being my favorite GM on rpol; I've mentioned him a number of times in these blogs before. Dante is his GMing name, not his real name.)
2006/06/19
Lack of following my own plans continues ...
41 / 90 days to go | 49 / 90 days gone
28,418 / 90,000 words done | 20,582 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2372
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 6259
Blogs: 15,133
My weekend plans were to do a bunch of household chores, and a bunch of editting for the bus story. Well, household chores are basically a lost cause at this point. I got some laundry done (good thing because I was running out of underwear). I did almost no writing at all.
[members-only cut]
What happened instead? A bunch of friends from RPoL managed to convince me to get a Livejournal. Finally, after months of talking about their friends-only posts that I can't see without being a member there. And it turns out that there's all sorts of shiny buttons involved in setting up an LJ blog.
Several hours later, when I was tired of tinkering with the color scheme, I ended up with this. :D
Meanwhile, unbekownst to them, I started a different blog there. A topic blog. I decided that Scenes from the Inside of a Chinese Takeout needed to be one. Every weekend I end up with more stuff I want to say - but it's day-to-day things, mostly, about whatever happened while I was there. I have a lot of anecdotes about ways I've managed to screw up, like the time I hit a wrong button on the credit card machine, which caused all business at the front counter to come to a halt (with like ten people in line) while Linda figured out how to fix it. Or the two new-hire cooks who didn't understand the concept of "why don't we let the English-speaking people speak to the customers and pass out food, while the cooks stay in the back and cook the food to be passed out, so that they aren't standing there waiting for it and therefore needing to be talked to."
There's a lot of stuff like that going on all the time, and there was nowhere really to go into it at great length before. I'll probably write lots of lengthy entries at first as I catch up the blog for the first couple months of those. Then it'll move into a weekly format, for just whatever happened during that weekend.
(Incidentally, I'd prefer that Galen not tell everyone about this blog, as it will include a lot of information about me that I'd rather some of them not know. Of course, for that matter, there's a lot of info in this blog that also qualifies... erm. Keep up the good work of keeping quiet. :D )
Anyway, so I really need to get started editting Stranger on a Bus. I don't know why I keep putting it off. It's like I have to psych myself up for it. And each chapter is good for around 2k words toward my SFR wordcount, which is sinking farther and farther behind... :( Must... begin... editting...
28,418 / 90,000 words done | 20,582 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2372
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 6259
Blogs: 15,133
My weekend plans were to do a bunch of household chores, and a bunch of editting for the bus story. Well, household chores are basically a lost cause at this point. I got some laundry done (good thing because I was running out of underwear). I did almost no writing at all.
[members-only cut]
What happened instead? A bunch of friends from RPoL managed to convince me to get a Livejournal. Finally, after months of talking about their friends-only posts that I can't see without being a member there. And it turns out that there's all sorts of shiny buttons involved in setting up an LJ blog.
Several hours later, when I was tired of tinkering with the color scheme, I ended up with this. :D
Meanwhile, unbekownst to them, I started a different blog there. A topic blog. I decided that Scenes from the Inside of a Chinese Takeout needed to be one. Every weekend I end up with more stuff I want to say - but it's day-to-day things, mostly, about whatever happened while I was there. I have a lot of anecdotes about ways I've managed to screw up, like the time I hit a wrong button on the credit card machine, which caused all business at the front counter to come to a halt (with like ten people in line) while Linda figured out how to fix it. Or the two new-hire cooks who didn't understand the concept of "why don't we let the English-speaking people speak to the customers and pass out food, while the cooks stay in the back and cook the food to be passed out, so that they aren't standing there waiting for it and therefore needing to be talked to."
There's a lot of stuff like that going on all the time, and there was nowhere really to go into it at great length before. I'll probably write lots of lengthy entries at first as I catch up the blog for the first couple months of those. Then it'll move into a weekly format, for just whatever happened during that weekend.
(Incidentally, I'd prefer that Galen not tell everyone about this blog, as it will include a lot of information about me that I'd rather some of them not know. Of course, for that matter, there's a lot of info in this blog that also qualifies... erm. Keep up the good work of keeping quiet. :D )
Anyway, so I really need to get started editting Stranger on a Bus. I don't know why I keep putting it off. It's like I have to psych myself up for it. And each chapter is good for around 2k words toward my SFR wordcount, which is sinking farther and farther behind... :( Must... begin... editting...
2006/06/13
I heard a fly buzz when I died
I spent last night tweaking up Dragonfly (again). I won't inflict it on the rest of you here (again), as this is a place for speculative fiction, not literary fiction, and the piece is still the epitomy of passivity and navel gazing. ;) It says what it needs to say to me, though.
Final wordcount is 917 words. Somewhere I read that if I'm turning my commas into periods in the morning, then turning them back into commas in the afternoon, it means it's ready to go. I'm at that state of tweakage now. I might show it to a few people who appreciate literary fiction if I can find any before July.
It's always odd to me how that works out. I don't like to read what I tend to write. Fortress Launne is best classified as fantasy, and there's very little fantasy that I enjoy reading. I don't particularly care about other people's renditions of classical music but greatly enjoy playing it. Maybe I'm just a narcissist, in love with my own creations to the exclusion of everyone else's. But then again, I also greatly enjoy listening to all sorts of music that I haven't a clue how to create, and the things I enjoy reading are the types of things I wouldn't ever think to write. In the latter case, in recent times anyway, that would be nonfiction science-related articles in things like Discover Magazine, Smithsonian, Science News, etc. I'm a scientist, and I have no inspiration to write any of the articles in the magazines I most enjoy reading. Meanwhile my reaction to most fiction magazines (the types of places I'm likely to attempt to submit stuff in the future) leaves me "ehh" for actually reading.
Anyway, back to Dragonfly. I went and looked up the Emily Dickinson poem that apparently had a much greater influence on the piece than I thought. I'd read it back in high school or somesuch and forgot all but the very first line. In fact, up until I reread it just now, I could've sworn it was an abstract 4-line poem - and not something with 4 stanzas and concrete imagery. And here I thought I didn't much care for Emily Dickinson. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the spectrum, Stranger on a Bus is still stalled out. I've been a bit depressed in the past few days, and this makes it hard to work on things that are high-speed action-adventure. However, I have a friend originally from Russia who gets quite passionate about all things Russian, and I'm planning to inflict him with Chapter 5 (when a band of rogue Russians try to hijack the bus) for his thoughts on cultural accuracy. The names I use for the hijackers are definitely wrong, so hopefully he'll feel inclined to rename everyone involved for me. That should hopefully give me the kick in the pants I need to start line-editting things from the beginning, too, which I need to do before I finish Chapter 10. The last bit of Chapter 10 needs to draw rather heavily from everything that went on in the first nine chapters, and the details are a bit fuzzy since the last time I looked at them back in September.
And finally, yesterday I wrote a blog entry elsewhere about hurricanes. Alberto is hitting Florida right now, on its way up through Savannah GA (where I am) and I felt inclined to wax poetic about my past experiences with hurricanes. After I was done, I noticed that I'd managed to put it into the approximate format for creative nonfiction. I'd spend quite a bit of time looking that up, while pondering the possibilities of a Scenes from the Inside of a Chinese Takeout which is kind of tabled at the moment. Apparently stuff sank in that I can use elsewhere, though.
[members-only cut]
I'm putting the full text of the other blog entry here in case anyone is curious. It could use some tweakage but the overall form is right. Thinking about my process while writing it, I kind of wish I'd saved some intermediate stages for my own personal amusement - from the "blurt out a bunch of disjointed thoughts onto the screen" stage to where it is now. I call these things "first drafts" but in retrospect it isn't really, because there's already been a ton of editting gone into it before it sees the light of day. On the other hand, the "blurt it all out" stage could be classified under "prewrite" mode too. Overall, it's not really a process with discrete stages, as everything sort of grades into each other.
Anyway, here it is:
Final wordcount is 917 words. Somewhere I read that if I'm turning my commas into periods in the morning, then turning them back into commas in the afternoon, it means it's ready to go. I'm at that state of tweakage now. I might show it to a few people who appreciate literary fiction if I can find any before July.
It's always odd to me how that works out. I don't like to read what I tend to write. Fortress Launne is best classified as fantasy, and there's very little fantasy that I enjoy reading. I don't particularly care about other people's renditions of classical music but greatly enjoy playing it. Maybe I'm just a narcissist, in love with my own creations to the exclusion of everyone else's. But then again, I also greatly enjoy listening to all sorts of music that I haven't a clue how to create, and the things I enjoy reading are the types of things I wouldn't ever think to write. In the latter case, in recent times anyway, that would be nonfiction science-related articles in things like Discover Magazine, Smithsonian, Science News, etc. I'm a scientist, and I have no inspiration to write any of the articles in the magazines I most enjoy reading. Meanwhile my reaction to most fiction magazines (the types of places I'm likely to attempt to submit stuff in the future) leaves me "ehh" for actually reading.
Anyway, back to Dragonfly. I went and looked up the Emily Dickinson poem that apparently had a much greater influence on the piece than I thought. I'd read it back in high school or somesuch and forgot all but the very first line. In fact, up until I reread it just now, I could've sworn it was an abstract 4-line poem - and not something with 4 stanzas and concrete imagery. And here I thought I didn't much care for Emily Dickinson. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the spectrum, Stranger on a Bus is still stalled out. I've been a bit depressed in the past few days, and this makes it hard to work on things that are high-speed action-adventure. However, I have a friend originally from Russia who gets quite passionate about all things Russian, and I'm planning to inflict him with Chapter 5 (when a band of rogue Russians try to hijack the bus) for his thoughts on cultural accuracy. The names I use for the hijackers are definitely wrong, so hopefully he'll feel inclined to rename everyone involved for me. That should hopefully give me the kick in the pants I need to start line-editting things from the beginning, too, which I need to do before I finish Chapter 10. The last bit of Chapter 10 needs to draw rather heavily from everything that went on in the first nine chapters, and the details are a bit fuzzy since the last time I looked at them back in September.
And finally, yesterday I wrote a blog entry elsewhere about hurricanes. Alberto is hitting Florida right now, on its way up through Savannah GA (where I am) and I felt inclined to wax poetic about my past experiences with hurricanes. After I was done, I noticed that I'd managed to put it into the approximate format for creative nonfiction. I'd spend quite a bit of time looking that up, while pondering the possibilities of a Scenes from the Inside of a Chinese Takeout which is kind of tabled at the moment. Apparently stuff sank in that I can use elsewhere, though.
[members-only cut]
I'm putting the full text of the other blog entry here in case anyone is curious. It could use some tweakage but the overall form is right. Thinking about my process while writing it, I kind of wish I'd saved some intermediate stages for my own personal amusement - from the "blurt out a bunch of disjointed thoughts onto the screen" stage to where it is now. I call these things "first drafts" but in retrospect it isn't really, because there's already been a ton of editting gone into it before it sees the light of day. On the other hand, the "blurt it all out" stage could be classified under "prewrite" mode too. Overall, it's not really a process with discrete stages, as everything sort of grades into each other.
Anyway, here it is:
Later tonight, Alberto will hit Florida. First tropical storm of the 2006 hurricane season. Possibly a weak category 1 by the time it makes landfall. Nobody is out trying to catch the big waves this time. They're being sensible and stocking up on supplies, or evacuating. The pall of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma last year, and the quadruple-whammy on Florida in 2004, still hangs over everyone.
My personal experiences with hurricanes have been remarkably uneventful by comparison. I was in Wilmington, NC during the time period when every single Atlantic hurricane seemed intent on making landfall in Wilmington, NC; I missed out on Bertha and Fran of 1996, but was there for Bonnie in 1998, and Dennis and Floyd in 1999. (My best friend at the time saw all five of those, plus he was in Charleston for Hugo in 1988. He figured he was cursed.) In all of those cases, I lived on relatively high ground (as high as one can hope for in a place that's totally flat). There was lots of wind and rain, but no thunder or lightning. And the power was out. Which meant hours upon hours of sitting around in the dark with nothing to do. We saw the eye of Bonnie as it passed right over my apartment complex, on such a slow trek that we were in it for an hour. That was about as exciting as things ever got.
Hurricanes are rather boring. It's the aftermath that sucks. That's when all the flooding problems start, with all the overflowing rivers. The full impact of a hurricane tends not to be immediately evident, because it isn't so much the downed street signs and power lines as it is when all that extra water starts coming back downstream to get back to the ocean.
Wilmington is in the part of the southeast coast that juts outward, making it a prime target for hurricanes going by. Savannah, GA is in the part of the coast that indents inward, which makes the odds of something hitting here much less. So far since I've lived here, there have been some near-misses, but nothing to cause much alarm.
The projected path of Alberto has it hitting Savannah from behind by Wednesday morning - going over a bunch of land, so it will hopefully just be severe thunderstorms by the time it gets here.
As for the rest of 2006, the hurricane specialists predict another highly active year, though it will be extremely difficult to top last year, which broke an enormous number of records.
Guess we'll see what happens.
2006/05/21
Haircuts and Chinese Takeouts
I got a haircut today. Lopped off over 12 inches so I could donate it to Locks of Love. It cost about $16, which in the grand scheme of things with average barbershops these days, is really quite cheap.
The manager of the chinese takeout where I work weekends took one look at it and said "I could've done that for you for free!"
Oh well. Next time I guess. :) Next time won't be for two years, though, because that's how long I intend to wait before I get another haircut. Must allow hair to grow long enough to donate again. This latest batch is my third donation. My hair is good quality for it; a color-in-demand (black), very healthy, etc. Grows fast. Never abused with styling or perms or whatnot. I do nothing with it but wash it and drip dry.
[members-only cut]
I haven't actually mentioned the chinese takeout in these blogs here, have I? Well, I look like a 19-year-old Asian girl. This means that in about half the chinese takeouts I go to, I get job offers. They figure I'm a college student. It's a little amusing when even the Asians think I look young. ;) But that's one of the perks of being trans - eternal youth. Then again, the downside is I get taken for being a naive child, too, and people (including my mother!! >.<) are always surprised when they notice I'm capable of doing things like an average 30+ year old normal adult. (My younger sister doesn't get this from my mother. :p But then again she looks her actual age...)
Anyway, so they needed some help working cash register during dinner, and I said I could help on weekends. Why? I still don't know. I already have a full-time job with lots of good benefits and other assorted perks. Granted cost of living is rising much faster than my annual cost-of-living raises ... but I'm not desperate for cash (yet).
Either way, I love the job. :) It's just 3 hours a day Saturday and Sunday - not long enough to get bored. I take orders and run cash register and put fortune cookies into the bags, and I'm finally getting the hang of the menu and remembering the prices of the most commonly ordered items (which seems to be the deep-fried things, oddly enough. Wings and egg rolls are popular.).
The most embarrassing thing has been discovering that I can't count change to save my life. I've spent too long using plastic for all my purchases and using a calculator and/or Excel or Matlab to do complex mathematical feats at my desk job. I can code Matlab to do all sorts of things to gigantic blocks of numbers that have decimals to the 8th place, and I can't count change back without major help. :( It's very humbling watching Linda (the manager) do it entirely in her head in a split-second.
They figured out fairly quickly that my Mandarin is very poor; I've lost a lot of basic vocabulary over the years, and they tend to speak English to me (though there's only two who actually know any English). Amongst themselves they're speaking Fujian dialect which I don't know at all.
They treat me like family. As Chinese families are, they're always trying to feed me. The manager will wander by and hand me a slice of watermelon if things are slow. ;) I must say that I've never worked a food service job where I'm not only allowed to eat and drink on the job, they actually give me food. In this place, though, there seem to be random watermelon-eating times where everyone will stop working to eat. They deep-fried some pillsbury biscuits one time too; those taste sort of like the elephant ears at carnivals and are quite a treat because they remind me of my childhood when my mother occasionally did the same things. (I grew up in a Chinese restaurant.)
It's an interesting perspective, too. The people who work there have all sorts of skills that I don't. They lead what look like very simple lives - chop up fresh vegetables, cook all sorts of great food, wash things in the sink that have no business being in a restaurant (could've sworn the manager's mother was washing a slip (the undergarment) one time). But because I knew what my own parents were like, they actually do more than just the facade most people see. It's an interesting and marketable front that tends to get people tipping generously when they see "poor Chinese family who barely speak English and work their fingers to the bone, and really know how to cook." For the first couple weekends I was the manager's cousin. Today I got downgraded to "friend" though, perhaps because I really am not similar enough to them and also my English is too good. ;)
I suppose in a lot of ways it's me going back to my roots. My parents owned a Chinese restaurant for 14ish years of my childhood, and we lived upstairs to it. I worked there only occasionally, but we were really spoiled brats. :p Or, more likely, my mother had more ambitious things in mind with our futures and we therefore weren't required to work in the restaurant much. But my family did all the usual sorts of things beyond restaurant-running, too. Went out to eat at other restaurants, for example. All of the normal regular things people do.
Going back to it 15 years later after having rambled around in the world doing other things for a while, though, it's been intriguing to compare perspectives. What it looks like from the average customer's point of view, what it looks like from the other side of the counter, what the facade is in between. Also, what the kitchen help was like in my parents' restaurant compared to how they are in this takeout, how everyone was treated, etc. Also how laidback and simple it all is.
It's a very happy takeout. I'm glad to be a part of it.
The manager of the chinese takeout where I work weekends took one look at it and said "I could've done that for you for free!"
Oh well. Next time I guess. :) Next time won't be for two years, though, because that's how long I intend to wait before I get another haircut. Must allow hair to grow long enough to donate again. This latest batch is my third donation. My hair is good quality for it; a color-in-demand (black), very healthy, etc. Grows fast. Never abused with styling or perms or whatnot. I do nothing with it but wash it and drip dry.
[members-only cut]
I haven't actually mentioned the chinese takeout in these blogs here, have I? Well, I look like a 19-year-old Asian girl. This means that in about half the chinese takeouts I go to, I get job offers. They figure I'm a college student. It's a little amusing when even the Asians think I look young. ;) But that's one of the perks of being trans - eternal youth. Then again, the downside is I get taken for being a naive child, too, and people (including my mother!! >.<) are always surprised when they notice I'm capable of doing things like an average 30+ year old normal adult. (My younger sister doesn't get this from my mother. :p But then again she looks her actual age...)
Anyway, so they needed some help working cash register during dinner, and I said I could help on weekends. Why? I still don't know. I already have a full-time job with lots of good benefits and other assorted perks. Granted cost of living is rising much faster than my annual cost-of-living raises ... but I'm not desperate for cash (yet).
Either way, I love the job. :) It's just 3 hours a day Saturday and Sunday - not long enough to get bored. I take orders and run cash register and put fortune cookies into the bags, and I'm finally getting the hang of the menu and remembering the prices of the most commonly ordered items (which seems to be the deep-fried things, oddly enough. Wings and egg rolls are popular.).
The most embarrassing thing has been discovering that I can't count change to save my life. I've spent too long using plastic for all my purchases and using a calculator and/or Excel or Matlab to do complex mathematical feats at my desk job. I can code Matlab to do all sorts of things to gigantic blocks of numbers that have decimals to the 8th place, and I can't count change back without major help. :( It's very humbling watching Linda (the manager) do it entirely in her head in a split-second.
They figured out fairly quickly that my Mandarin is very poor; I've lost a lot of basic vocabulary over the years, and they tend to speak English to me (though there's only two who actually know any English). Amongst themselves they're speaking Fujian dialect which I don't know at all.
They treat me like family. As Chinese families are, they're always trying to feed me. The manager will wander by and hand me a slice of watermelon if things are slow. ;) I must say that I've never worked a food service job where I'm not only allowed to eat and drink on the job, they actually give me food. In this place, though, there seem to be random watermelon-eating times where everyone will stop working to eat. They deep-fried some pillsbury biscuits one time too; those taste sort of like the elephant ears at carnivals and are quite a treat because they remind me of my childhood when my mother occasionally did the same things. (I grew up in a Chinese restaurant.)
It's an interesting perspective, too. The people who work there have all sorts of skills that I don't. They lead what look like very simple lives - chop up fresh vegetables, cook all sorts of great food, wash things in the sink that have no business being in a restaurant (could've sworn the manager's mother was washing a slip (the undergarment) one time). But because I knew what my own parents were like, they actually do more than just the facade most people see. It's an interesting and marketable front that tends to get people tipping generously when they see "poor Chinese family who barely speak English and work their fingers to the bone, and really know how to cook." For the first couple weekends I was the manager's cousin. Today I got downgraded to "friend" though, perhaps because I really am not similar enough to them and also my English is too good. ;)
I suppose in a lot of ways it's me going back to my roots. My parents owned a Chinese restaurant for 14ish years of my childhood, and we lived upstairs to it. I worked there only occasionally, but we were really spoiled brats. :p Or, more likely, my mother had more ambitious things in mind with our futures and we therefore weren't required to work in the restaurant much. But my family did all the usual sorts of things beyond restaurant-running, too. Went out to eat at other restaurants, for example. All of the normal regular things people do.
Going back to it 15 years later after having rambled around in the world doing other things for a while, though, it's been intriguing to compare perspectives. What it looks like from the average customer's point of view, what it looks like from the other side of the counter, what the facade is in between. Also, what the kitchen help was like in my parents' restaurant compared to how they are in this takeout, how everyone was treated, etc. Also how laidback and simple it all is.
It's a very happy takeout. I'm glad to be a part of it.
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